Bad Renoir

We went over to see the Renoir Collection at LACMA (LA County Museum of Art) this afternoon. Its there until May 9th. It had gotten a bad review in the LA Times from some (their usual) idiot art critic. The painting above was in the exhibit (this reproduction doesn't do the painting justice) and I was reminded about how much I like his landscapes. There were a lot of nudes and it was a large representation of his "later in life" work. The Bathers was at the end. His output was enormous. And the last 10-15 years of his life, it looked like (from a film clip that they had running) he had to tape his brush to his hand because his hands were twisted from arthritis.
All of these are impressionistic paintings. He did more and more studio work with models and family.

Anyhow it was worth seeing

Odd Jobs, I've Really Lost Count

After I graduated to day time accounting jobs, I took a job with Volunteers of America, which ran all these service sites around LA county to provide half-way houses for youth offenders getting out and homeless shelters and meal programs for the elderly, etc, etc. There were about twenty different locations and they decided they wanted an inventory system. Guess who got to go. And guess what day it was. KCRW used to devote the entire broadcast day to the reading of the book. So I spend one wonderful day driving and listening, taking breaks to go in and set up the inventory stuff and then coming back to Joyce and the sunshine.
All roads lead to this book- call me if you've not read it, I'll coach you, I'll help you. There's also some wonderful lectures about it by Joseph Campbell, who was a Joyce scholar as well as a expert on mythology.

F. Scott Fitzgerald's Copy of Ulysses

This copy of Ulysses by James Joyce was presented by the author to F. Scott Fitzgerald in 1928. The inscription reads:

"Dear Mr. Fitzgerald: Here with is
the book you gave me signed and
I am adding a portrait of the artist
as a once young man with the
thanks of your much obliged but
most pusillanamous guest.
Sincerely yours James Joyce 11.7.928" 

This is the end of the book:

Pudgy Men Writing Poetry

I found this (green and dying) on Google while I was trying to find out more about the naturalist that walked out into the snow. I think his last name was Green, but I couldn't find anything. In Junior High and High School I would sneak off to the Public Library from time to time and listen to the old LP recordings of writers reading their own work. I knew what Bill Faulkner and Elliot and Plath and Ginsberg sounded like long before you folks did. There is no one else in the entire world that can do this justice

God and The Mountains

This was a watercolor done by Thomas Moran on a survey expedition in 1873. He was a professional painter, but as this was time of the large panoramic canvases of America's outback, he wanted to do some it too. So he signed up to go with a US Army Survey party. Moran was a vegetarian, but Army rations were bacon and beans then. He had a rough time of it. 

The cross is a natural thing caused by the fissions in the rock that fill with snow.   

I got to thinking about god and mountains. There's been a couple of times I prayed up there, if you can call it that. I wrote my dead sister's name in the log book on the top of Mt Whitney when I reached the summit. Another time it had to do with wanting to ask for protection for my lost daughter. 

I'm not a Christian, I hate the whole martyr thing and guilt spread over natural things. I tried being a Buddhist for a while, but I kept falling asleep in meditation. 

Years ago in therapy, I was asked to visualize my death and I came up with being very old and frail and lying in a bed by a open window overlooking a sunny hill where my grandchildren and great-grandchildren were playing. And just dozing off. 

There was a naturalist that was dying from cancer and so, before he could no longer move about, he left his winter cabin and chose to freeze to death by exposure. It's supposed to be pretty painless- freezing to death- like just falling asleep.

I think I'd like to be up there somewhere. The cross isn't important.

It'd be nice if it was a sunny day.

Trucking To California - Expert Hitchhiking

I got a ride out of west Texas on a moving van all the way to El Paso in '76. I got this poem and a few other good rides on that trip. It turned out it was the last time I was out there like that. It was worth it.
The poem and a video of me reading it is here
www.murderer.us

STRANDED You want to know why I balk At west Texas; at working the rigs There another summer? You ever been stranded On the white shoulder Of a little highway, of a little town, And chatted with the boys Who’ve driven out from their cruising To discover where you’re going? You ever spent the night Rolled in the wet grass below And slept late because of the silence? You forget to think With the itch to go And you take a ride With a red-bearded rancher Who’s turning off in five miles. The beer he offered for breakfast Makes you steam like the dew rising Before the sun. Across the high dry concrete And the dust settling after, There was a brook running so Shallow and clear, it was ice in the sand. The water falling from your fingers Could be her cold tresses in the shower; The smooth sand, her hip beneath the sheet. But there was no need to recall her, I could soothe my throbbing scalp And fill my canteen In the frozen moment Where a breeze might seem like a wild desire Only dreamt of. You’ve never waited all day For the good ride, And when it finally comes (A moving van, pushing ninety, Through the rolling hills at dusk) You’ve not been made to explain To the driver, younger than yourself, Why you’ve left her. It couldn’t be the beer every evening, The long crying spells, Or that your friends wouldn’t come around Any more, But what could you say to a stranger? One that tells you, you’re wrong? You could get out at the next stop. Then alone, Wish to go back to where the water runs Like ice in your veins, For now you’ve recalled her And you must bow your head And hold out a thumb to get away from there.

A Rollin' Stone

http://s0.ilike.com/play#Kingston+Trio:A+Rolling+Stone:10979077:s41375956.10967241.19538415.0.2.117%2Cstd_9f63bff4fa8048149e0a641edc28e51d

The link will take you to the last song I can remember that was on my soundtrack for my life then. Sorry, but I couldn't find the complete song anywhere. When I was working as a late night janitor at the A & W Drive-In on the south end of town, I'd bring my little cassette player and turn up the tape as I mopped floors. When a certain girl graduated when I was finishing my junior year in high school, I wished her well and then drove off on my motorcycle like a heartsick Bronson (see reference to old TV show). I wasn't the only one. My backpacking buddy a few years ago surprised me by telling a boy that "Easy Rider" was the movie for his generation. (This guy didn't go on a road trip in his life.)

The Real Thing

The Real Thing:

This was on the cassette





GOD WERE WE FOOLISH!

Michael Parks

This was on the cassette. There was a album of songs the Michael Parks did in connection with "The Came Bronson" that had this song on it. He also sang "Oklahoma Hills" by Woody on the album which is one of the songs I've picked up on my new hobby horse of the banjo. At the time he had that James Dean, Mickey Roake, look, but then he opened his mouth and he was this politically Reaganite in the making. This guy has nothing to do with any of that, but the sound is right. I could whistle this sound like you wouldn't believe. It was something I practiced on the highway, waiting for a ride.

The next ride

The next guy to pick me up was a painter than was driving one of these. He was a prof of art over in Ohio and had made a chunk of money by selling some work to a corporation or some such. He was driving around looking at farm property. He had a vision of spending his summers out in some rural wooded area, communing and doing his thing. We had a long conversation about how wonderful Ken Kesey was (I had just finished "Sometimes A Great Notion") and he let me out at a major intersection going south. Have we all forgotten how wonderful this book was?

This was on the cassette tape too:

Nail Your Shoes To The Kitchen Floor, Lace 'Em Up & Bar The Door

This was another one on the cassette
http://compvid101.blogspot.com/2009/06/nick-reynolds-meets-irving-burgie.html
Check out this blog for more history. The clip is composed by this blogger

Those were the days

My second ride hitchhiking took me down through southern Indiana past Louisville and into Kentucky. The driver looked at lot like this (but not as pretty). She rambled on about being a school teacher and going to go live with her sister somewhere because she had been fired. She would speed up to 65-70 and then get engrossed in telling some story and slow back down to about 30-35. Why I stayed in the car with her as long as I did, I have no idea. Maybe I was thankful to have a ride at all. After we passed Louisville, she began having trouble staying in her lane as well. I asked to be let out at the next exit and she pulled over to the shoulder in the middle of no where to let me out. I explained that I needed to get to an exit ramp and she might get a ticket for stopping here. We rode on in silence for another ten minutes before we got somewhere. She was insulted and I was scared. She wasn't really sure where she was driving to and asked me to help her with a map before she left me. We figured out she was on the wrong freeway and probably a hundred miles in the wrong direction. Lord knows if she ever got where she was going. Real romantic, huh? This was one of the songs I had on my cassette tape (but it was probably the Kingston Trio cover of the song)

What a Time It Was

By 1973 I had read a whole lot of Jack Kerouac, I had a collection of music that I had made into several cassette compilations of songs about traveling, roaming, and riding the rails. 'Then Came Bronson' the TV show had burned itself in to my id in 1969. And I had no money. I had been to Utah and back and a buddy and I were going to canoe down the Mississippi to New Orleans. When that didn't work out, I had thought about following a girl friend to Kentucky, but she didn't want me. So with about $350.00 I quit the Waffle House Cafe, put most of my stuff (books mostly) in boxes in my mother's garage and hitchhiked out of Bloomington Indiana. That first morning I started out on the main street and as no one picked me up, I walked several miles to the edge of town with my thumb out. The interstate then didn't come close to Bloomington. Around 1:00 pm, just when I thought I would need to walk back to my mother's house and come up with a new plan, I was picked up by a bread delivery truck.

The guy driving was the Waffle House delivery man, whom I had known for the last year. He took me to the freeway and wished me luck. He sort of looked like a young Red Buttons. Nice guy. Contrary to the romantic image above, I had a bedroll and a Credit Card that would work at any Best Western Motel.

A Lie That Was True

When I came back from Utah at nineteen, a college drop-out and a divorced man I stayed with my mother and her new husband for a couple of days and then moved in with a high school friend into one of these. We had been friends for years. We played chess at coffee houses, played this weird civil war battle game that we made up, payed Martian chess. He used to come hang out at my girl friend's house and drink homemade wine and chain smoke and play chess with us. We worked in the same restaurant for awhile. I was around for him the day after he tried to shoot his brains out. I was there when his older sister died. He was with me the night I passed out drunk in the snow and got picked up by the cops as well, because he wouldn't deny knowing me. He hated dishonesty. I was the liar of all time. He believed everything I told him. Therapy in Utah had taught me I did not have to lie. I was in the position of wanting to tell people the truth about myself or just letting it lie (There are some puns you can't resist. I couldn't help myself). His girlfriend and I hated each other. She blamed me for the failure of my marriage. She didn't like the way I talked, walked, breathed or combed my hair. We had a fight one night. He made peace rather awkwardly and painfully. And I stayed a few more weeks and then found another place on my own. When I left, I told him the truth, sorted out the whoopers from the reality for him, knowing full well that he would tell me to go get lost. He did. I figured it was easier for everyone this way. We never talked again. I heard he married the girl. Ah, the passions and the correctness of youth. I stopped fabricating my life and started living it instead. Getting over the self hatred took a little longer.

Lies And Another Job I Once Had

I was a Teacher's Aid for LA Unified for a couple of years. I wanted to see if I liked it well enough to go back to school and get my teaching credentials. I didn't. But the last year was at a local elementary school here in Westchester and I divided my time between two 5th grade teachers and did playground supervision at morning break and at lunch. The teachers had me very involved. I was doing special tutoring for the dummies in one class and running an art class in the other. The playground was quite large and the "Official" playground supervisor was this very large woman who came out and sat down at the top of the yard by the classrooms. Well, before my advent, there wasn't an adult at the other end of the yard and the large woman (who reminded me a lot of a larger rounder Red Queen from Alice In Wonderland) ('Off with their heads!') never ever walked down the yard, so anything went. I soon discovered that the younger kids were being taken for their money and belongings by the fifth graders. I investigated, kept my eyes open and wanted to understand the whole thing before I decided what to do. The two ring leaders were best friends from one of the classes I worked in. One kid was a straight A student and the other was one of the dummies that could barely read. (He wasn't stupid, but he didn't think he had to read)
Some of my Boy Scouts that were in Middle School and High School with my twins had gone to this elementary school. I questioned them. And apparently, the extortion ring was self-perpetuating and had been going on every year for at least six or seven years. The littler kids grew up to take the place of the ones that left for middle school.
So, one morning when I was supposed to tutor the dummies in reading vocabulary, I wrote 'Extortion' one the board and asked the kids (and one of my ringleaders) what it meant. No one knew so I very carefully explained the ins and out of it to them. How I could go over and put my arm around a kid's shoulder (again, my ringleader) and say 'That's a real cool chain you have on, can I see that?' 'Oh, take it off and let me see it."
Anyway, I explained how some of the teachers and some of the officials at the school had asked us aids to keep a look out because they had understood that there were some things that were not legal that were taking place (and the kids now understood that extortion could be viewed as illegal) and how if it came to light, it might mean that some of the kids might not get to graduate and go on to middle school. (They were all 3-4 months away from the end of their 5th grade year.) At morning break recess, my dummy ringleader was in deep discussion with his buddy. It all stopped that day. I hope I broke the cycle, but I didn't go back the next year. I was done. Teaching wasn't exactly what I wanted. I am good at extortion though.

Lies I've Told

This is a view of Kirkwood Avenue at night, looking from the IU campus toward downtown. This hasn't changed at all from 1970. In 1969, I was attending High School two hours in the morning and working at a nearby restaurant in the afternoon and as a fry cook. I only needed two classes to graduate and they had a work program thing. So I got a job where I worked the lunch hour and prepped the dinner time and I had my evenings off on the weekends for the first time since I was 14. The trouble was that I hated the place. The boss was crabby, the kitchen was open so all the customers watched you every minute, so you couldn't even scratch yourself and it was me all by my lonesome for the whole shift. I made one friend, a dark curly haired waitress who was in Grad School at IU, but she was the only one. So I just quit. It was the first time in my life, I just called them and said, I quit. I'm not coming back. I assumed I could find another job, and I did.
I ran into the waitress an the street around here (above) and she wanted to know what had happened to me. I told her that I had a friend that had been desperate to kick his smack habit and I quit the restaurant to sit with him for a few days while he went cold turkey. She believed me. (Everyone believed me then, I don't know why) She said, why don't you come over for a meeting at this center we're putting together. You might be someone that could help. So I showed up. Her boyfriend was the leader, most of them were psych grad students at IU and had decided to form a crisis center for drug related problems. They had a donated house and were setting up training programs for counselors and the like. And the girl had repeated my story and they wanted my help. I went through the training and begin to work one evening a week manning the desk and talking to people on the phone. It was mostly being sympathetic. Most of the problems were college students on bad trips or some of the screw-loose people that hung around the college. The place was supposed to be non-judgmental about the drug use. Most of the counselors did drugs, just not while on duty. I actually made a connection one night while off duty. Anyway, Michael (I just remembered his name) was full of wisdom. The question he would pose was: "Do you want to help people or do you want to make them feel good?"

I was actually ok, I think. I left for a year and started volunteering again when I came back. Most of the original people had graduated and were no longer there. I had become, at 20, an old-timer counselor. In 72 the drugs and the problems had sort of moved on from acid and grass to other stuff and there were a lot of guns around. I was on duty with a real shrink-to-be one night and we spent the entire night with a guy playing with a pistol as he threatened to do himself in. We got him to a shrink at IU in the morning and he finally surrendered the gun. I realized that night that I was way out of my depth. It finally ended when I stopped by one night and a 'client' attacked me physically because he was nutso. He was a little tiny guy. (I'm 6'7") I thought by taking him down I could get him to calm down. So I maneuvered him so his back was to the lawn and then held him down on the grass until he seemed to settle. It started all over twenty minutes later, so I left. It was decided later by the staff that we should have called the police. The whole idea of the house was to have a place where the police didn't come. The original group had worked with the cops when they had set it up. I decided I was really not invested in doing it anymore and didn't know how people could do it as a profession and so walked away.

Anyway, this is what it looks like today. They do battered women and a lot of other programs and have other locations, etc. etc. One of my destroyed murals was a tree with branches and leaves that covered a wall in the first house that was torn down.

More BS (Fondly Recalled)

The drawing is of Sentinel Peak at Camp Whitsett up above Kernville, drawn about 10 years ago, the first summer we went. You are supposed to get up at three in the morning and hike up to the top in time to watch the sun rise. The first year the Scoutmaster and I got there about nine. As I began to get back into shape, I got a little faster. It's a fun summer camp. The first year my kid was so excited that I barely saw him. He ran from thing to thing. Earned 7 merit badges in five days, which I think is still the Troop record. I did spy on him taking the test to get his swimming badge, sure that he was going to drown or fail, but he did neither. I played chess with the waterfront manager every summer I went. We played water polo and did the Cope Course which is climbing around a rope course thirty feet in the air and exiting by a zip line. I started taking one Merit Badge class with my guys each year. We did Wilderness Survival and Canoeing and went horseback riding and I started drawing again after a eight year hiatus. We did our first backpacking trip out of here.

This lake was usually green and brown by the time we arrived in August. The guys threw up every year as we were coming down the mountain on our way home. There was a traditional place to stop by the road so they could heave their breakfast of leftover candy.

Fond Places

There's a place up in the Santa Monica Mountains that is a fond place in my heart. It's a Boy Scout Camp off of Sunset, you have to go north through a residential area and then off on a single lane paved road that changes into gravel and back again. That may have been improved upon because now its been years since I've been up there. It started with Cub Scouts. They had camp-out weekends for the Cub Scouts, but the kid could only come if one of their parents came, so me (Cub Scout Den Leader) and my three Cub Scout part-time wives / mothers/ buddies would take our boys up there and camp. It was all very silly, the boys could not run, the boys could not have hot chocolate at the lodge unless it was the official designated time to have hot chocolate (they might drink it, I was told) and you had to put a deposit down for ping pong balls to use the ping pong tables in the lodge. (I started bringing my own). But the kids got to shoot bows and arrows (though they could not touch the rope fence around the archery range) and shoot off bottle rockets and we all slept in tents and had fires and played frisbee etc etc. The first night Chris and I slept up there in a tent, it was a warm night and I took the weather cover off the tent so we could see the stars before we went to sleep and that night it rained and I had to dry everything out inside the van so we could stay the second night and we were up at four in the morning soaked sneaking hot chocolate at the lodge. I had Leadership training up here when we graduated to Boy Scouts. I had already discovered it was a very cool place to hike after dark. I'd bed everyone down, sneak a nightcap and go for a stroll up into the hills without a light. We didn't really come back until our Order of the Arrow ordeal. I was tapped out with my kid because they needed more OA adults. We spend a day up there, eating very little, not allowed to speak all day, and clearing brush and mowing. I snuck a few words with a Dad that was a Professor of Asian Economic Development at UCLA but spent a good afternoon clearing a meadow up above the lodge. When our work was done, they fed us a big steak dinner and all the boys were going to watch videos and sleep together on the floor of the lodge. I looked around and realized that I did not want to sleep with 100 smelly boys and their fathers/ leaders so I went up to my meadow that I had cleared and slept out with a tent for the first time.
This picture is even later, when the camp was closed because of the great winter rain storms of 2003 or 2004 that washed out the only road into the place. We did a little weekend backpack trip from Will Rogers Park over to Josepho (the name of the camp) and back again to get the younger kids ready for a bigger backpack trip. My kid wasn't here. Probably playing basketball somewhere.

My buddy that took the picture, Dan Olson, (that's his son Jack next to me) has his name on a plaque in the lodge here. He was a Eagle Scout with a Malibu Troop back before ole Jack was born and a OA'r too.

Odd Places

At sixteen, my mother and sister and I went to visit the Grandparents in Drexel, Missouri (which deserves its own description at some point). The trip there was hours on the road with me in the backseat with a copy of "All The King's Men" by Robert Penn Warren

 

It has all became intermeshed in my brain, the open summer corn fields of Illinois and Missouri, the heat and dust of August with the Midwest humidity and the business shirts with their sweat spots under the arms of stumping in Louisiana and the tobacco fields and the white crackers and the poor sharecroppers and my Uncle's farm that couldn't support his family so he doubled as an electrician in this little town of about 400 souls fifty miles due south of Kansas City. I finished it on my Grandmothers front porch swing. Don't think I could reread it without feeling the sticky vinyl seat and my head stiffly propped up by the arm rest on the door. Maybe this car ride was why I went to New Orleans? 

It Was Greener Than This

After my first divorce at 18, I went back home to Indiana (good title for a song) and worked in restaurants and volunteered again at a drug crisis house that had been set up by some psych grad students at IU. Still mean to write about it someday. I was not at all qualified to do anything but I could be sympathetic and it was mostly listening to druggies and their problems and helping with their bad drug trips. When I came back a group had started a halfway house for junkies from Indianapolis who had been in state prison, but were let out to participate in a methadone treatment plan. They all lived together in a supervised house in Bloomington. I got to be friends with most of them and a few volunteered as counselors at the Drug Crisis House. There was a girl that was interested in me that was part of this group, but I can't remember her name. We all went up to some kind of program in Indianapolis in two cars and ate dinner together and were put up at a house up there. The next day we came back, but on the way we stopped at one of the junkie's friends who had moved out to the middle of nowhere as a retreat thing. The girl and I wandered off and sat on a hill that looked on something like this and for a brief half hour I died and went to heaven right there. We talked a little about what love meant. I was sure I wanted to give myself away to someone- that was love for me then. I can still see the green hills rolling on for a lifetime.

The painter is Paul Turner Sargent- died in the 40s
http://www.antiquescientifica.com/Paul%20Turner%20Sargent1.htm

Fishing at Christmas Time In Montana

His last year hadn’t been great. He had been active and energetic his whole life
and it had become difficult to just walk out of the house. The summer here had
come and gone in a blaze of forest fires—some of the largest in the country. Your
ride up took you through mile-long stretches of blackened timber. Even the early
snow couldn’t make the bare and broken trees look better. And he hadn’t been
able to help. You’d rather conjure him up in front of the market in his Santa
Claus suit, teasing and poking the kids. Or better still, beside you out on that frozen
lake while his buddies cut the holes in the ice for the fishing lines, elbowing
you to pour an extra dollop of whiskey into your coffee. They had caught a ton of
trout that day and just got drunker as the coffee ran out but the whiskey didn’t.
By afternoon, the light had faded to a soft glow and a light silent snowfall began
and continued endlessly until their whole group seemed frozen in time. You had
never known how snowflakes could fall and surround your soul like that. How
you would like to go back and do one of those days over. But it was all said and
done for him And you weren’t sure if you were supposed to feel bad or not.
-From my novel "It Knows You By No Other Name" available from Amazon

I'd been before and since, but that day with Al and his nephews up near Libby was the best. Maybe it was the whiskey. That trip was fine. We went snowmobiling, dancing on Saturday night at Elks Lodge, and generally saw the sights. I got pictures.

Random Places

At twenty-two, I was working in a Printing Company in New Orleans, and made friends with Milton, who was working as a printer's devil in the same shop. I was invited over to his house. He still lived at home. His very overweight sister had a crush on me. His divorced aunt had a crush on me. I was told to stay away from her, but not the sister. He had a cousin who was a Playboy Bunny. We would all go out to Lake Pontchartrain and sail little one man sail boats out the lake. It looked like this. It was great fun. The water was like glass most of the time. I flirted with the Playboy Bunny, who obviously believed I was white trash. There were houses out there built out in the lake on poles with wide verandas. I said for years, I was going back and buy a house out there and sit in my rocker and crack crab. The houses were probably wiped away in Katrina. What I wouldn't give to be out there right now in that little boat.

Stupid Home Repair Tricks

I already mentioned in passing that I laid drywall on a ceiling. (You could only put it up in small pieces when you were working alone- it looked ok sort of. I never could get it all even and flat.)

Well, my other claim to stupid home repair tricks was the repair of our rotten eves on our little house in Venice. Only the outside edges were rotten, right? So I cut off all the rotten wood and then cut wood to make new ends to the slats (see picture- the slats running horizontally above the vertical beams coming down from the crown of the roof.) and then nailed them in place and puttied the cracks and sanded them all down to make them look even.

The neighbor next door (who did construction) said, ever so politely, that he'd never seen it done that way. It took forever. And it was still a little wavy. When we sold the house part the escrow was to have all of my handy work ripped out and real full boards replaced under all the eves. The guys that did it took one day.

In my new place, I actually built and framed individual panes of glass in windows on either side of french doors which I bought in one piece. But there was a method to my madness- I wanted to have a framework in place and individual panes smaller than a normal person could climb through, so no one would be tempted to break a window and climb into the fish bowl I built.

But I would never ever do it again. I'm still an amateur and you can tell. I made up a fancy ceiling for my rebuilt garage that has required repair off and on, which I am probably the only one in the world that would be willing to do. When I am 75, the entire ceiling will be hanging loosely over my head, flapping like great palm leaves in a rain forest, waiting for one last rain storm to make the whole thing collapse. Ah, but it was cool while it lasted.

What to read when you are bored

http://www.greenharbor.com/fffolder/ffresearch.html

Odd Jobs Around The House

My first gig was repairing my room in the slave quarter room (those were the rooms out back from the main building in New Orleans - where the slaves/ servants used to live) in a boarding house in the French Quarter. I got two weeks free rent for repairing the plaster and replacing the carpet and painting. It was one little room, you had to go outside in the courtyard and into the main building to take a shower. I didn't last there too long, I moved out to the river bend area where there were grass and trees and a porch swing and a kitchen and bath room and bedroom. Two weeks after I moved out of my little room, I ran into a a neighbor from the building and was told the ceiling in my little room totally collapsed destroying everything. Luckily, they hadn't rented it out yet.

Then I built bookcases for Cary Beckham's bookshop that he was opening on Decatur. The first couple were kind of cock-eyed, but I think the rest were ok. He didn't have to pay a carpenter. With a few of the scraps I built a bench for my front porch on Louisiana Ave. 

The real undertaking began when we were expecting the twins. We had a little two bedroom house in Venice and I was using the second bedroom as a writing room. Babies were going to need that space. We had a little stand alone garage out back (a one car garage) and I proceeded to remodel that and redo the bedroom for the babies at the same time. I got a lot of books and rewired the garage, put in drywall and a ceiling and skylights and a floor and another window. I learned things, like don't hang drywall on the ceiling, Cutting a hole in a wall or a ceiling is consciousness raising and one should probably ask those professionals one knows for advice before you start to make up how to do things. Anyway, I've not been posting cause I was finishing a bathroom that I bragged about tiling in a previous post. 

The babies room got a mural.

I went on to redo much of the little house in Venice and now am sitting in my masterpiece, a two car garage conversion with a wall of bookshelves and fake beamed ceilings and windows to look out on Westchester at night. If you can't afford it, the second best thing is to build it yourself. (Even if you realize ten years later, some of the stupid choices you made that you then spend years trying to fix) These days, I tell folks that the third time I repair or remodel something that's the one that's the good one.

Memorable Characters

In Junior High I graduated from Doc Savage, Man of Bronze reprinted pulps from the fifties to Edgar Rice Burroughs Mars books. John Carter with Dejah is pictured above. I had heard that a movie was finally being made and discovered there's a trilogy in the works, with high budget special effects and 12 foot tall four armed green warriors and flying ships and naked princesses. Its not too late to start reading these: 

1 A Princess of Mars

2 The Gods of Mars

3 The Warlord of Mars

4 Thuvia, Maid of Mars

5 The Chessmen of Mars

6 The Master Mind of Mars

7 A Fighting Man of Mars

8 Swords of Mars

9 Synthetic Men of Mars

10 Llana of Gathol

11 John Carter of Mars: John Carter and the Giant of Mars

(by John Coleman Burroughs)

    John Carter of Mars: Skeleton Men of Jupiter

Its much better than Tarzan. I gave them to my son and he read them all. A buddy and me in High School made a Martian Chess Set and played  for a about a year. I learned writing structure from this guy. Short and sweet scenes- stop when you're done.

#2- I just finished writing a novel about his father

Originally published in Historic Nantucket Vol. 51, No. 1 (Winter 2002), p. 5-9
Stevenson's Pillow: A Sketch of Austin Strong
By Joseph Theroux

IN ABOUT 1906, SEVERAL RETIRED WHALEMEN shucked scallops in a shack on the Nantucket wharf. In stepped an off-islander, dressed to the nines in a blue blazer and gleaming white ducks, the very picture of a weekend yachtie. He listened to their discussion of various South Sea ports-of-call: "Rarotonga, the Bay of Islands, and Vavau," he heard, and he mentioned sailing into the bay at Apia, Samoa.
Canny old Captain George Grant, himself born in Samoa (his mother having sailed with his whaler father), challenged the newcomer's claim to being familiar with the area.
"Talofa, palagi!" he enunciated in Samoan over his basket of scallops. ("Greetings, white man!")
The yachtie never missed a beat: "O te Ositini o Vailima,'" he replied. ("I'm Austin of Vailima.") There was a pause. Then he asked, "O oe a aiga Atua?" ("Are you of the Atua family?" or — it's also a pun — "Are you related to God?")
Captain Grant chuckled his surprise and welcomed the man into their circle. He had passed the test.
He was Austin Strong, grandson of Fanny Stevenson, step-grandson of Robert Louis Stevenson. His father was the artist Joe Strong, whose Connecticut-born father had preached to heathens from Honolulu to Hyannis. His mother was Belle Strong, nee Osbourne. (She had named him Austin to honor an artistic friend, Mrs. Joseph Austin.) Born in San Francisco on April 18, 1881, his first memories were of Hawaii, where his bohemian parents had settled on Emma Street, near downtown Honolulu.
Later, he had shared the family's romantic life in Samoa at the novelist's last home, Vailima, near Apia. It was there that the childless Stevenson had once made a Thanksgiving toast upon the boy's arrival: "Vailima is blessed — there is a child in the house."
It was Austin Strong — also childless — who created a sailing school on Nantucket for his many nieces and nephews, as well as the Cheaper by the Dozen Gilbreth children. It was called the Rainbow Fleet and was established in one of those wharf shacks where he was first welcomed into Nantucket society. His niece, Helen Wilson Sherman, told me, "He was so spiritual, but he always had time for the children. He made me Commodore of the Rainbow Fleet. He stuck davits on the boathouse he built on the wharf and we learned to sail in a cat-boat he hung from the davits."
He wrote successful Broadway plays (The Drums of Oude, Seventh Heaven, among others) and follies for Nantucketers. He led the campaign against paving over the cobblestones on Main Street, and won. When automobiles began making an appearance, Strong and others feared for the safety of children on the narrow streets of the town. He was from a different era: he was more comfortable with horse-drawn carriages. They fought the introduction of cars, but failed in their efforts. How different the town — and the island — would be had he succeeded!
Once he stood before a grand carriage in fear for his life. As a child in Honolulu, he was walking near Kapiolani Park. In his hat he carried contraband — one of the king's goldfish. He had purloined it in a fishing expedition, defying the sign that banned the activity and promised punishment to "the full severity of the law." Seven-year-old Austin knew that the "full severity" meant death, yet he had caught the large goldfish anyway.
Imagine the boy's shock upon being confronted with the king's own carriage on the roadway. He saw the royal crest on the carriage door and heard the king's booming voice: "Austin!" (for the king knew his parents) "What are you doing so far from home?"
The boy blurted out his guilty secret, adding, "Oh, please don't cut off my head!"
King Kalakaua replied, "I have no intention of cutting off your head."
But the goldfish — really a carp — was revived with a calabash of water, and later a royal decree was delivered to the terrified boy at the Strong household. It gave Austin Strong permission "to fish in the Kapiolani Park for the rest of his days." It was signed with a flourish, Kalakaua Rex.
When the American man-o-war Adams visited Honolulu, the crew took a shine to the boy, who was entranced by ships. When a reception and dance were held on board, the invitation carried the note: "Please bring Austin." The crew had earlier taken his measurements. Now they presented him with two uniforms, one duck-white, one navy blue. As he was escorted onto the deck, "his big blue eyes shining," Belle recalled, "someone was overheard saying: "There goes the happiest little boy in Honolulu.'"
The next year his family joined the Stevensons in Samoa. The years in the South Seas were among the most idyllic for young Austin, as well as the most painful.
He attended a local missionary school and picked up the Samoan language quicker than anyone in the household. In the early years at Vailima, he was often the translator between his parents and the giant Samoan handymen around the house, who called him Ositini. RLS called him "the Overseer." He became a favorite of another servant, Arrick, a Solomon Island cannibal who built him a one-stringed harp.
RLS would also tutor him in his lessons. His mother noted that "the boy had the impression that world history consisted largely of Scottish victories." When Stevenson's elderly mother came to live with them, she taught Austin poetry. It was noted that he recited with a strong Scots brogue.
In this literary household everyone, not just RLS, was writing. Fanny was keeping a journal and writing an account of their voyage. Belle was called "the Amanuensis," RLS's secretary. Her brother Lloyd wrote poetry. Even so, everyone was surprised when one evening little Austin "announced that he would read us several chapters of a story he had written; as yet it has no tide," wrote Fanny proudly in her diary. "It was properly divided into chapters and paragraphs and the conversations were in inverted commas. He looked up before beginning and said, 'I think I must change one of my names, for Thompson and Simpson rhyme too much.' We were thunderstruck at this remark from a boy of ten." Belle recalled that Uncle Lloyd had recently refused to give Austin ten cents. For this, he became the villain of the story, Mr. Morgan. "Eying his uncle rather nervously, Austin read: 'Though very handsome, Mr. Morgan was a miser.'"
Fanny added that the story so far "was remarkably good." She overheard his prayers that night. When he was done he added: "And oh, Lord, I thank you that I have wrote — written — a book. Amen."
On May 11, 1892, a photographer came up from town to snap pictures of the family. Little Austin sat with Arrick and Belle, far from his father. For several years his parents had been bickering, but when Joe Strong was caught in a dalliance with a Samoan girl — followed by thefts and slanders against Belle — RLS banned him from the house. Belle and Joe were divorced in July 1892. Now without his father, Austin relied more fully on Lloyd and Stevenson, who was eventually made his guardian. Once, however, Austin met up with his father on Beach Road in Apia. Fanny wrote in her diary that he was "sent home with dashed spirits and damaged loyalty."
Joe Strong returned to San Francisco, where he remarried and continued painting until his death several years later, estranged from the Stevensons, as well as from Austin.
For amusements, the creative Stevenson invented games and played soldier with Austin, just as he had with Lloyd as a boy. (Together they had drawn a map that inspired Treasure Island). In their war games, Austin was christened General Hoskyns. When he was feeling playful in those happy days, Stevenson would address him by that name.
When it was time for Austin to continue his education in America, Stevenson jotted a poem which included the lines:
When far away pursuing your education
O don't forget your friend of'umble station.
He left in September 1892 and lived with his aunt, Nellie Sanchez, in Monterey, California. He was saddened to leave but looked forward to his letters from "Uncle Louis," addressed to "General Hoskyns." He loved visiting Golden Gate Park; the greenery reminding him of the islands. He was away for over a year, returning to Vailima on April 19,1894.
When the warship Curasao visited Samoa that month, Austin became a favorite of the crew and was feted aboard. He was fascinated with the ship and its fittings, continuing his lifelong love of ships. He loved sailing in Apia's bay.
In December, Uncle Louis was tutoring him in French. On the 4th, they practiced a dialogue to be delivered at Christmas. But that day Stevenson died. A Union Jack was draped over the coffin, as well as finely woven mats. One of these fine mats was given to young Austin, who cried his grief into it. He was also given a personal possession of Stevenson's, a delicately woven Marquesan pillow, which the novelist had received there in 1888 and had served him on his Casco voyage.
Austin attended Wellington College in New Zealand from 1895 to 1898, being a champion swimmer and debater. His class picture shows a dapper and confident seventeen-year-old, sporting a silk waistcoat, watch chain, and the trace of a moustache. He also showed an affinity for draftsmanship and later studied landscape architecture in New York. He was so proficient that in 1901 he won a contract to design Auckland's Cornwall Park. In the design, he recalled Golden Gate Park and incorporated many of its features, including bicycle paths, tennis courts, and children's play areas, while keeping Cornwall's natural contours and historic Maori earthworks.
He left New Zealand and met up with his Uncle Lloyd, who was publishing stories and beginning to write novels. They hit on an idea and cowrote a play called The Exile (Napoleon on St. Helena) which was produced in London in 1903.
The experience was so enjoyable that Strong decided at last that he knew what he wanted to do. Over the next thirty years he wrote or adapted some fifteen plays, on the average of one every other year, a remarkable output. One of his most successful plays was Seventh Heaven, which ran to over 700 performances. It was made into a movie with Janet Gaynor and Frederick March in 1927 and won the Photoplay medal, the precursor to the Oscar.
In 1905 he wrote The Drums of Oude, which was first produced in London the following year. It was staged in New York soon after, and during the production he met his future wife, Mary Wilson of Providence, Rhode Island. It was Mary who introduced him to the island of Nantucket, where they honeymooned.
The Strongs were soon spending every summer on Nantucket. Eventually they purchased a rundown house at 5 Quince Street, a few steps beyond the center of town. It was a 1731 dwelling, which they renovated; he converted the empty attic into his working study. Throughout his Nantucket summers he wrote there every morning. Mary's rosebushes soon clambered on the front trellis. In addition to his civic work, he wrote follies, which raised money for the Nantucket Yacht Club stage. In 1921 he took up the cause of supporting the Cottage Hospital, which was in need of cash and in search of a fund-raiser. Strong got out his sketchpad and pens and produced a charming decorative map of Nantucket Island, sales of which generated an income for the facility for years to come and is now a collector's item.
The social event of 1927 was the Nantucket Follies, which he and Robert Benchley — actor, writer, raconteur, wit — conceived as a fund-raiser for the Yacht Club. Benchley, the first of several Nantucket writers of that name (see: The Off-Islanders by Nathaniel, Jaws by Peter), had bought property in Siasconset. He, like Strong, also performed in the follies, which included sea dramas, dancing girls, sea chanteys, and skits.
He somehow found the time to pursue his many interests. An amateur craftsman, he had a small workshop in his attic where he built stage sets and performed puppet shows with his good friend, Tony Sarg. During World War II he organized Victory Gardens and helped enforce blackouts. He was always available to reporters and aspiring authors. He also had a hand in more than a few Hollywood films.
Strong's film writing went back to 1914 when he adapted Rostand's play A Good Little Devil, starring Mary Pickford and Lillian Gish. In 1917 he adapted the play The Fall of the Romanoffs. He returned to film work in 1927 when he wrote the script for Seventh Heaven. In 1933 he was a "dialogue doctor" for Mary Pickford's Secrets and Katharine Hepburn's Little Women. Three years later he cowrote the comedy Along Came Love. The next year saw a new version of Seventh Heaven with James Stewart. In 1946 he adapted Three Wise Fools into a Lionel Barrymore picture. But he preferred writing for the stage and once told an interviewer that he believed "the public is becoming tired of seeing just shadows and they long for real life and actual personalities such as only can be found on the stage." He saw no irony in the statement: for him the stage was "real life."
In the last years of his life he took to recalling vividly his youth in Samoa. Finished with plays, he sketched out his experiences in the islands, like his encounter with King Kalakaua. He wrote "His Oceanic Majesty's Goldfish" for the Atlantic Monthly, and it was reprinted by Reader's Digest and other anthologies. He recalled how his grandmother Fanny had kept the tubercular Stevenson alive for so long and had been his devoted fellow adventurer. Strong chose her for his "most unforgettable character" in the March 1946 Reader's Digest. He saw the essays as part of a projected autobiography.
September always meant returning to New York and his apartment on Madison Avenue. But in 1952 he was enjoying his work on his memoirs, and he resisted leaving Nantucket.
On one September Sunday, he felt poorly and took to his bed. He was full of pains and aches. Well, he told himself, he was 71. But he felt no better on Monday, nor on Tuesday. He speculated on the irony that his mother Belle would turn 95 two days later.
Wednesday morning everyone knew something was wrong. He was taken to the Cottage Hospital, which had benefited from his many fund-raisers. But the little jaunt up the road and back weakened him. Soon after he was put to bed, he suffered a heart attack. He died that morning, September 17, 1952.
Much of Nantucket turned out for the funeral service at St. Paul's Church on Friday. He was buried in his wife's family plot in Rumford, Rhode Island.
The New York Herald noted: "Memories of him are scattered around the oceans...."
Strong's study in the attic of 5 Quince was stuffed with memorabilia from his travels, nautical artifacts, stage sets, an extensive library, as well as his cherished possessions associated with his legal guardian, Uncle Louis.
A sketch of Stevenson, the woven pillow from the Marquesas, the finely woven mat decorated with red feathers, all eventually found their way to the Nantucket Historical Association. A portion of his library — books, manuscripts, logbooks, letters — was donated to the archives.
His generosity made the islanders caretakers of the pillow that had cradled the head of the frail novelist and the fine mat that had been draped at his funeral with the Union Jack.
Like Strong himself, the objects had traveled the far oceans, coming ashore at Nantucket.

Joseph Theroux is the principal of Keaukaha Elementary School, Hilo, Hawaii, but also calls Apia, Samoa, and West Dennis, Mass., home. He previously contributed an article on William Gary to the fall 1999 issue of Historic Nantucket.

Reader's Digest Got Nothing On Me- Most Memorable Person #1

A friend, Lamont sent me this I think. I've kept it, its from the New Orleans Times-Picayune from 1999.  When I met Fred, it was 1973, I was 21 or 22 and working for Cary Beckham at his Magazine Street store. Cary had only recently hired Fred. What was written in this obit I had no knowledge of. What Cary didn't tell was the most interesting parts. Here's the Fred folklore- (don't know how true) He got divorced and hitchhiked to New Orleans and for the first week or so, slept under the Canal Street Ferry Wharf. He decided he wanted to work in a bookstore, so he started showing up at Cary's shop on Royal Street in the French Quarter and volunteering to help around the shop with an idea of learning the business. Cary said after a few weeks of accepting Fred's free help, he felt so guilty that he hired him to run the store in the evenings and the weekends. Story was that Fred was an orphan as a young child and raised in an orphanage. During the time I knew him, he had a boarding house room somewhere and had bare bones belongings. Only one pair of shoes and one jacket. He didn't believe in having more. He only slept a few hours a night and would nap sitting up in the bookstore for fifteen minutes at a time. He spent the long nights reading. He loved books. But he also loved people unconditionally. He would smile a beaming smile at you when you walked into the shop. He knew your name if you came back. I loved the man. He must have been in his fifties when I was there and worked for Cary at the other shop.

He loved James Oliver Curwood. 

When I went back to visit in '86? I ran into him early in morning in the French Quarter. I hadn't told anyone I knew that I was coming to visit. We went and had a bear claw and coffee and I walked with him to open the bookstore on Royal Street. He hadn't changed a bit. Had spent twelve years selling books in that little shop in the quarter. I was sad because his teeth had gone south. He had no money, no dental plan, etc. etc. He had  this bright white smile when I had known him before. Everyone in the city who read books, knew him. You wonder if his daughter knew him.