PHOTO CAPTION WINNER! In October 1975, when I was 15, I submitted a photo caption for a contest held by a local publication in Tucson, Arizona called the “Mountain Newsreal,” and won. Hard to believe they actually published it.
The first time I heard about Disneyland was in 1969 when I was in fourth grade, from a kid whose family went there on vacation, and I didn’t even know he was talking about Disneyland because he never mentioned the name of the place.He just said that it was this really cool amusement park where you could go there for days and days and still not see everything there was to see.He said it had robot pirates and jungle animals, spaceships and submarines you could ride in, cowboys and Indians and horses, a haunted house, boats and canoes and an island, a giant snow-covered mountain with a roller coaster inside, and fireworks every night.Even though we had just recently landed a man on the moon, it still sounded too unbelievable to be true, and I thought he was exaggerating.At that point, growing up in Tucson, the only amusement parks I had ever seen were the supermarket parking lot kind, and you could be done with those in an hour or two.You certainly did not need several days to get through those rusty, dilapidated puke inducers, usually operated by unsavory, shifty-eyed, chain smoking gentlemen trying to make a few bucks while out on prison furlough.
Later, I learned he was telling the truth, and the magical place was called Disneyland.It even had its own weekly one-hour color commercial every Sunday night on TV (which I watched on the same black and white set on which I watched astronauts step foot on the lunar surface), hosted by the original Willie Wonka himself, Walt Disney.I dreamed of someday going there, and I will dismiss the suspense right up front by telling you that ultimately I did go there, and, in fact, in my lifetime I have visited this happy, enchanted theme park more than seventy-five times, even joining the crowds during Disneyland’s 30th, 50th, and 60th anniversaries.
But this is not a tale of merriment, and wholesome experiences with Mickey and Donald and Goofy of which I wish to tell.It is a story – several stories, in fact – of the kingdom as seen through the reality of menstrual periods and projectile vomiting, and how I, in my teenage years, darkened and soiled the hallowed grounds of many a childhood memory with my rebel escapades.
No Tampons in the Park On one visit with my first wife in the 1980s, she began cramping and we went on a search for sanitary napkins, hitting every bathroom and vendor we could find, but to no avail.Finally we wound up at the first aid center, where we had the pleasure of sitting and listening to staff conduct searches for tampons over their walkie talkies, along with every other giggling and snickering guest whohappened to be in the room.My wife was quite humiliated.Eventually, the staff were a bit embarrassed, as well, when they were forced to disclose to us that there was not a single feminine hygiene product anywhere to be found in any of the Lands, and they had to send a cast member to a nearby Ralph’s grocery store to buy her some.On the bright side, we were given free tickets to come back and enjoy Periodland on another day.
Paint the Hotel Room When my youngest son was small, he did what all children should probably never do at Disneyland, and that is lick a handrail.A handrail that has been touched by more than a million germ ridden fingers from all over the world.This resulted in an awful lot of regurgitation.There were nine of us frugally crammed into a Best Westernhotel room, and when he began to violently hurl over and over, so did everyone else.All night long and much of the next day.Some slept in closets, another in the bathtub, in an attempt to stay away from the technicolor spray as much as possible, but much like dominoes fall one after the other, once one person started spewing, others followed.It was never ending.At the time, none of us knew about the handrail, so we thought it was from something we had eaten at the Golden Horseshoe Review, like warm Ranch dressing or overpriced mozzarella sticks, so we alerted Disneyland officials about a potential health hazard and informed them they had given us food poisoning. Because we missed several days of visiting the park while holed up in toilet bowl rotation, we were given free tickets to come back and enjoy Bacterialand on another day.
The Hippiest Place on Earth Flashback to the 1970s, and most of my friends and I dabbled in our own form of amusement park rides through the heavy use of weed and pills and mushrooms and peyote and cocaine and alcohol, only occasionally stopping to churn out some school work or ingest vast quantities of chocolate milk and Hostess pastries.It was during this time that my girlfriend’s parents took us to Disneyland, and we went stocked with a pretty fair amount of cocaine.We would each excuse ourselves to the separate bathrooms and lock ourselves in a stall, where we cut the powder on tiny mirrors balanced on our legs and snorted lines through straws torn in half.At one point, my stall door was not locked all the way, and it slowly swung open.I looked up to see several children in their mouse ears waiting their turn, just staring at me.I quickly closed the door, and continued my business.Finally, her parents began to wonder why we had to keep using the bathroom so much, and why both of us always needed to go at the exact same time, and we were forced to tell them the god awful truth: we had explosive diarrhea.They were a bit concerned because we had all eaten the samefood all day and they felt just fine, but we brushed off their skepticism, because, frankly, we were too high to care or come up with a better story, and neither of us actually thought about saying we had licked a handrail.
On another occasion, but this time with my parents, we found some really fun places to smoke up, such as in the Haunted Mansion ride with my three-year-old half-brother sitting between us, and in a Skyway gondola, where we had to duck down and hide when we noticed my dad and stepmom coming toward us from the other direction.
On a different trip to the resort with my girlfriends parent’s and also a buddy of ours, we got high all over the park, even toking inside the fossil cave on Tom Sawyer’s Island while kids and their parents adventured past through our clouds of smoke.Toward the end of the day we had ran out of dope, and were just standing around by a bench in a faraway corner of Tomorrowland. Our buddy pulled out the empty pipe and puffed on it one last time.Suddenly, we were pounced on by a flurry of suited men wearing sunglasses, and whisked away to an underground area, probably called Securityland. We were forced to sit on our hands and not speak to one another while we awaited interrogation. When my girlfriend spit out her gum in a sand-filled ashtray nearby, an agent ran over and sifted through the sand and butts looking for the evil contraband he believed she had been smuggling in her mouth. We were called in one at a time to give our stories. They searched through my girlfriend’s purse. She had bottles of vitamins which they suspected might be hallucinogenic pills. She also carried a bottle of isopropyl alcohol and cotton balls which she used to cleanse the California smog away from her skin, and, of course, they asked her where she was hiding the hypodermic needles and heroin. As it turned out, each of us accidentally told the exact same story – that we had found the pipe just laying there on the ground, and it wasn’t ours – so they let us go, but they did eject us from the park. We were escorted out to the dark parking area somewhere in lot Z as in “Zip-a-dee-doo-dah,” by burly guys in shades who looked like they had just stepped out of one of the Matrix films. When we told her parents later about our innocent little misstep and how horribly we had been treated by the big bad men who hide behind the curtain, her dad was so upset that he called and complained to the Disneyland management.
And we were given free tickets to come back and enjoy Druggyland on another day.
When someone’s child does something unexpected and outrageous, bringing unwanted attention and embarrassment to their parents, it is awkward, but also extremely delightful to watch, because it’s not your child and it’s not you.And then there are those moments when it turns out to be your child, and the spotlight is suddenly on you.Those moments: not much fun.Years ago, our family was enjoying the Haunted Mansion ride in Disneyland, when it suddenly came to a stop.An announcement came over the loudspeaker informing us that someone had inadvertently caused the “doom buggies” to halt, but that the ride would resume shortly.I turned to my wife and joked, “Man, I hope that wasn’t our kid!”Much to my dismay, it was.Our little boy had decided part way through the attraction that he wanted to ride with mommy and daddy, so he tried to climb out of the doom buggy, deploying the safety bar.The incident probably wouldn’t have been so bad had it not repeated itself several years later ON THE SAME RIDE, but with a different child, this time involving a nose that began bleeding and would not stop.On that occasion, all guests had to depart their doom buggies and walk through the dark to the exit, as the Disney cast members shut down the Haunted Mansion for the remainder of the day, presumably so that Haz Mat could bleach down the building.As we left, Mickey Mouse actually kicked me in the shin and cursed at us.It totally sucked.
The worst public place in which to have your kid go nuts is probably church.One of our sons, when he was about three years old, walked up to the front where a member was giving a Sunday School lesson and grabbed the member’s watch, which the member had set down in front of him to keep track of his talk.Our son came back to his seat, proudly holding the stolen timepiece.I sheepishly walked back up and replaced the watch, while another church member gave our boy a bag of Cheerios to distract our boy and keep him busy.And it certainly did keep him busy, as he then began throwing the Cheerios one at a time at the speaker, with astonishingly accurate aim.No parents ever hunched down lower in their pew then we did that morning.
On another Sunday, his younger brother sat quietly as sacrament was passed.As the tray of bread went by, he took a piece, but then suddenly grabbed at the tray, spilling the bread everywhere while screaming, “I WANT MORE SANDWICHES!I WANT MORE SANDWICHES!”
My daughter has always been less inclined than her brothers to create scenes.She was, however, quite the scamp when she was younger, doing things like loading up the swing set with grapes to dry in the sun so she could make raisins, or doing her homework while perched on top of the refrigerator.She often slept with my shirt, because she said it smelled like her daddy, which made me feel very special.Then she embellished the compliment by telling me, “I like it because it smells like bacon!”Okaaaay.Weirdly, as an adult, bacon is one of her favorite things.
There was the time, though, when we were called in for a conference with her kindergarten teacher because my daughter had told a mean little black girl in her class who wanted to play with her that she couldn’t, because she was allergic to butterflies and black people.
She had the unique experience of growing up to work alongside and befriend her former first grade teacher, who enjoyed telling me stories about my daughter from their days together as teacher and student.Imagine how proud I was to hear that the teacher often worried about why my daughter’s hair was never brushed or why she always wore boots with no socks, making her feet smell something awful.This was illustrated by the cringe worthy tale of the day the students painted the bottoms of their feet to make foot prints on a school banner, and the teacher had gently suggested that my daughter wash her feet both before AND after the painting of their feet.
This does not mean that my daughter was left out of embarrassing incidents that involved her older brother.She was often the victim of his activities, many of which involved escaping our home.When he was around five, on the first day we moved into a new city, and while we were busy unloading trucks, my son disappeared, and nobody knew where he had gone.We frantically searched the unfamiliar neighborhood, gathering strangers along the way who volunteered to help us look, including a water delivery truck driver and several police officers.As it grew darker, and we grew more frightened, my son came riding down the sidewalk pedaling a toy fire engine behind a lady who asked if he was the child for whom we were searching.The lady told us that my son had knocked on her door and asked if he could visit with the kids he had heard playing in her backyard, and thinking that he was another child her kids usually hung around with, she had let him in to the backyard.Later, she heard the commotion in the street of people out looking for him, and realized that he was the missing boy, so she made sure that both he and his toy fire engine returned safely home.Except …. the fire engine was not his.We never did learn where it came from.
After living in the new home for a while, we received a knock on the door one morning around 5:30.I crawled out of bed wondering who would be knocking on our door at this ungodly hour, and opened it to find a policeman standing there with my three-year-old daughter.The officer had discovered her alone at a park several blocks away, playing in the dark on the playground.She told him that her brother had taken her to the park, but left when he got tired, and she wanted to stay and keep playing, so she didn’t leave with him.She then showed the officer where she lived.I looked in my son’s bedroom, and he was in bed fast asleep.I was shocked, and desperately began trying to convince the officer that I was an attentive parent who guarded my children safely and would never allow them to be endangered, but he looked at me like I was just another self-involved male who should never have been allowed to procreate, and advised me to put some extra locks on the door.
Which we did.But then a few days later came another knocking on the door at 5:30 in the morning, and once again, when I opened it, there stood the policeman and my daughter.This time, my son had helped her crawl out of their bedroom window to escape, and once again he had left the park to come back home to return to bed before she was done playing.I was sure I was going to jail, but he let me off with a warning.As he left, he looked at my little girl, chuckled and said, “This one sure is a pistol.You gotta make sure you hang on to her.”
So, we nailed the bedroom window shut and prayed that the house never caught on fire.We put more locks on the front door.We strung empty tin cans across the front yard to warn us if they tried to leave.Well, we didn’t really do that, but we did put locks on the gate to our backyard, so that when they went out back to play, they couldn’t try to escape.
But my clever son quickly learned how to remove enough slats in the wooden fence to squeeze through, and once again they were caught unattended at the park.
As parents, we all have stories of moments in which our offspring have appalled and humiliated us, and I certainly could go on, but instead I leave you with this tale, so horrifying that I will use vague references so as not to embarrass the child in question, who is of course now much older, and who probably has friends who visit this web site.However, it is I who should be the most embarrassed, as you will soon see.I will admit that it was one of my three sons for whom this happened, because frankly, if it had been my daughter, I probably would have given her up for adoption shortly afterward.
My son was young at the time of this event, but definitely old enough to know better.We were at his sibling’s end of year soccer party, held at a lovely park.The soccer sibling called my attention to the fact that said child was standing at a nearby tree, pants down around his knees, peeing on the tree, right out in the open and in front of all the soccer players, their parents and assorted family members.My mouth dropped open, and I immediately did what any right-thinking parent with an ounce of dignity would do.I grabbed the hands of the siblings and headed for the car to leave.My son saw me leaving, and hurriedly began trying to catch up to us, his pants still down, making it hard for him to walk.“Dad!” he shouted.“Wait for me!”“Don’t look back,” I admonished his brothers and sister.“Keep moving!”As I unlocked the car, and we began jumping in, I heard him yell, “Dad!I pooped my pants!”I glanced back, and here came this little boy toward me, one hand holding up his pants and the other coming out from behind his back, covered in poop.“Quick!” I shouted.“Lock the doors!”As I started the engine, a hand suddenly slapped against the driver’s side window, leaving a large brown handprint on theglass.“Dad!Where are you going?I pooped my pants!”My shoulders drooped in defeat, and I turned off the engine, deciding to rise to the challenge of being a good parent amidst the worst of times.I opened the door, and got out to help him.As I cleaned him up in a nearby rain puddle, he turned to me and said, “Thanks, Dad.I love you, Dad.Where were you going, Dad?”And I thought to myself, I was going to hell, pal.But I said, “Nowhere without you, buddy.And I love you, too.”
In 1982, I was a college student living in Pasadena with my roommate when I received in the mail a postcard stating that if I attended a 90 minute presentation I would take home one of four amazing prizes: $1000 in cash, a diamond ring worth $500, a brand new home video cassette recorder, or a mystery prize worth $100.This seemed too good to be true, but the fine print promised that there was no cost to me and no obligation to buy anything.All I had to do was call and set up an appointment.I made the call and was told that to get my prize, I needed to sit down with a salesman who would talk about the merits and advantages of a timeshare opportunity their company was offering.I explained I was a student with no money and bad credit, and the lady stated that she understood.“It’s all right,” she said.“We just need to make our quota and fill the appointments.There is no pressure to buy anything, and you definitely will leave with one of the four magnificent prizes we are giving away.”The little map on the reverse of the postcard showed that the location of the presentation was just down the highway from Pasadena, so with dreams of possibly putting a thousand dollars in my pocket, I scheduled the appointment, and asked my roommate if I could borrow his car.
The car was a real beat-up piece of garbage.My roommate made me promise to keep an eye on the water since the radiator leaked (“Don’t let it run dry and warp the head!” he warned me, whatever that meant) and pick him up that night from his job (“I’m off work at 10 PM.” “Don’t worry,” I said.“I’m leaving at 3:00.It can’t take that long for me to get back.”), and with that I took off on my first solo road trip in California.
It didn’t take long for me to realize that there was more to this than just getting on Interstate 10 and driving until I saw the exit at which to get off, like it described in the directions and map on the postcard.The map made it look like the exit was just a few miles or so away, but after more than an hour of driving, I began to get a sinking feeling that something was wrong.I pulled off at a gas station, and asked the attendant for help, who peered at the postcard, and chuckled a little.“You do realize that you are headed to Palm Springs, right?” he said.“Is that close by?” I asked.“Nope,” he smiled.“You still got a ways to go.”
This was alarming news.I was not prepared for such an excursion.I did not bring any money, and the car had a half a tank of gas left.But I had come this far, and undaunted, decided to forge ahead and get my prize.
Another hour or two later and I finally arrived at the location, but was told I was too late to attend the presentation.I had missed my appointment, and they, in fact, were closing down for the day.When the lady learned that I had traveled almost four hours from Pasadena to get there, she took pity, and said I would still get my prize.She handed me a small green metal box.I opened it to find inside a 50-piece ratchet set.My heart sank.This was not quite the prize I had hoped for.
I headed back to Pasadena.By now, it was starting to get dark.After a few hours I noticed that the fuel gauge was on empty, and I broke out in sweat.I had no idea how much longer I had before I reached home, and I had no money for gas.I thought about pulling over and seeing if someone was willing to buy the ratchet set off me, but instead I did what I thought would extend the number of miles I could travel on what little gas was left: I lifted my foot off the gas pedal and coasted until I almost came to a stop, then applied gas until I got back up to 55 miles per hour,and then lifted my foot off the gas pedal and coasted again.I repeated this until just outside of Los Angeles, when I was pulled over by a police officer, who informed me that I could no longer drive on the highway in this manner.He suggested I exit and look for someone in the city who could help me get more gasoline.
I drove into downtown L.A. and coasted to a stop in front of a huge building.It turned out to be the headquarters for the Los Angeles Times.The building was locked up for the night, but a security guard listened to my story, let me in, and led me up to the third floor which was bustling with reporters working at their desks, and introduced me to the night editor.
The night editor was gruff and grumpy, and eyed me suspiciously while I explained what had happened to me.In hindsight, I must have seemed like some sort of moron.He handed me a phone.“I’m not giving you any money,” he growled, “but you can call somebody to come get you.”
This proved to be a predicament, as I knew virtually no one in California.So, I called my dad in Tucson, Arizona, who called a friend of his in San Bernardino, who said he was willing to drive to Los Angeles to lend me some money.At this point, the night editor looked like his head was going to explode.He said, “Are you kidding me?You’re going to let that guy drive all the way down here to put gas in your car?”He got up from his desk, grabbed his coat, and motioned me to follow.“Jesus H. Christ, come on.I ain’t giving you money, but I’ll take you and get you some gas!”So, he drove behind me in his car to the nearest gas station, where he put $5.00 worth of unleaded into my tank.I took his name and address and promised I would repay him when I got home (which I did), but he snorted and muttered “I’m not going to ever see that money again,” and drove away into the night.
I got back on the freeway, and felt relieved that I would finally be able to get home.It was at that moment that smoke began to pour out from under the hood, and the temperature gauge showed that the engine was heating up.I pulled over, thinking the engine had caught on fire, but quickly realized that it was steam, not smoke, coming out, and remembered my roommate’s warning.He had also cautioned me about adding water when the motor was hot, saying it could crack the transmission, or something like that, so I waited 20 minutes for everything to cool down.Then I grabbed one of the jugs of water from the backseat, filled the radiator, and continued driving.Several miles later, steam began billowing out again.I pulled over, and repeated the process of waiting until the car was cool and then adding water.However, after two or three more times of this happening, I got more and more impatient to get home, and the time spent waiting for the engine to cool down grew shorter and shorter, until finally I was just adding water directly into the hot radiator.This would prove later to not be such a good idea.
It was 1:00 in the morning when I pulled up to my apartment.I didn’t even bother going to my roommate’s work, since he would have left there hours ago.What I didn’t know was that his house key was on the same key ring as his car key.So not only did he have to walk several miles to get home, he was locked out and had been sitting on the steps for three hours or longer.Needless to say he was not happy, and demanded that I split the prize with him.I showed him the 50-piece ratchet set, and said he could have 25 pieces.He stared at me.
I wish I could say that my Road Trip to Hell had a happy ending, but things only got worse the next day when my roommate learned that he need a new transmission because I had destroyed the head.
The up side, though, was that there was a nifty ratchet set that he could use to fix the car.
The summer of 1976 was the pinnacle of the Unites States of America Bicentennial celebration.Everywhere you looked, we were reminded of this historic Independence Day, and every possible bit of merchandise was branded in red, white and blue.The summer of 1976 was also when I would end my sophomore year of high school, turn 16, get my driver’s license, and embark on the road trip toward my own Independence Day.But first, a very different road trip had been planned for me by my Dad and Stepmom to help postpone that day of reckoning.
It was a trip to San Diego, in a large RV, with my younger brother in tow.As we drove through California, we sat at the kitchen table of the RV looking out the window while playing cards, and listening to the same big hits of the day being played relentlessly over and over on our transistor radio: “Afternoon Delight” by the Starland Vocal Band, “Let ‘Em In” by the Wings, mixed in with The Beach Boys’ “Graduation Day” and Alice Cooper’s “School’s Out,” because school was just getting out for the kids who lived in California.We were headed to a trailer park in Mission Bay.We were beyond miserable.
We stopped for lunch and parked in some vacant lot near the beach.While sandwiches were being prepared, my brother and I decided to leave the RV and walk around to explore the area.Much to our surprise, we found an abandoned amusement park nearby.Construction workers were in the act of demolishing rides and buildings.We walked right through the gates without anyone stopping us.
It was creepy as all get out.Snack bars stood intact, with their menu boards of offerings and prices covered in dust and cobwebs.A lonely roller coaster stretched up toward the sky.Rusty cars for smaller kiddie rides sat on dilapidated rails.Splintered boardwalks guarded by wooden railings badly in need of repair lay flattened across the weed-covered dirt by the ghosts of the many people who had walked them in the past.Ticket booths scattered the grounds like spooky sentinels with their glass faces shattered and broken.Trash cans were overflowing with aged food wrappers and drinking cups.Shredded flags and banners flapped overhead in the breeze, disturbing the unearthly silence, even though the soundtrack of the ocean eerily played in the background.
We headed toward a Fun House, and walked through the deserted queue toward the entrance.A huge smiling clown face stared back at us, it’s faded and peeling paint making it look even more sinister than it normally would, and we stepped through the door into the darkness.Sunlight shined through the cracks between the wooden planks in the walls, illuminating the inside corridors.We were startled to see that everything was more or less intact.To the right were a row of twisted mirrors, and we watched in the dust-covered glass our bodies morph and change shape into silly versions of ourselves as we walked past.Next we zig-zagged through a maze of glass panes and mirrors.It was a tight-fit, and the wooden floor below was warped and rotting.The musty smell was overpowering.We were greatly relieved when we finally came out the other side into a small room.A broken exit sign dangled on a wire from above, mocking us.In the corners of the room were discarded clothes, bottles and cans, and signs that small fires had once burned here and there.My mind conjured up images of the types of people who had used this room and for what purposes – homeless beach bums seeking shelter, promiscuous teenagers looking for a place in which to make out, drug addicts settling down after copping their fix.It gave me the shivers to think that to someone or some persons this was their hangout, and we were invaders who were clearly trespassing.We moved on to the huge wooden tunnel.
The tunnel was slick and polished.At one time, it spun while park customers attempted to walk through it without falling down and tumbling around like a pair of socks in a dryer.We were able to spin the tunnel with our hands, and amused ourselves for a while.Then we headed to the Fun House exit, a long wooden slide which ended on a hard rubber mat outside.The slide was full of splinters, so we did not dare to sit down and scoot our way out.We walked around the amusement park a little while longer, but it became more sad and depressing each minute to be swallowed up in this decaying time capsule that once sparked joy and laughter, but now sat dead and gloomy in stark contrast to the bright blue sky, the lively sunshine, and the inviting beach nearby.I later learned that this wasBelmont Park,built in 1925 by wealthy sugar magnate John D Spreckles.The 2,600 foot long roller coaster was the famed Giant Dipper.Belmont Park was immensely popular in the 30’s, 40’s and 50’s, but fell into disrepair in the 60’s and 70’s, eventually closing down in 1976.In 1989, a new developer took over and restored the park, paying over two million dollars to fix the Giant Dipper, and today Belmont Park is up and running once again.
We spent the remainder of the vacation in a trailer park by Mission Bay.In the evenings, my brother and I would stand outside of a nearby 7-11 trying to get strangers to buy beer for us, and then would sit on the beach drinking Pabst Blue Ribbon out of cans hidden in paper bags, just like the real winos did.One night, we actually got someone to sell us a small baggie of the worst pot on this planet, complete with an orange peel inside to keep the seeds and stems moist, since that is what it was mostly comprised of.Later, he and I were sitting in the sand, when a friendly dude approached us and offered us more beer.We obliged.My brother left to go back to the trailer, and the guy moved closer to me.He began complimenting me on a huge ugly Budweiser belt buckle I was wearing which I had borrowed from my brother, even reaching out several times to touch it.Then he invited me to meet him the next morning at the bus stop, to take a trip with him up to Blacks Beach, a popular nudist beach.I started to get nervous, and declined.When he asked me to go the shower house and take a shower with him, I immediately left and went back to the RV.I woke up my dad, and told him what happened, which in hindsight probably was not the wisest move to make, since I reeked of beer.But my dad could see that I was scared and upset, and so he became upset, too, and walked me back to the beach to look for the guy, who of course was no longer there (he probably was in the shower house soaping up some other unsuspecting teenager).The next morning, I saw the guy standing at the bus stop as a bus drove up.The sign on the bus said “Blacks Beach.”
Road trips build memories, and reflecting back on those memories can change hearts.Looking back over the years, that trip to San Diego turned out to be a pretty good start to the great Independence Day of 1976.Yankee Doodle Doo.
WHAT’S IT ALL ABOUT, ALPHY? I spent many long years working at Alpha Beta grocery store number 175 in Pasadena, California, starting out as a courtesy clerk (or box boy) and promoting to night manager (or PIC – Person in Charge), first for Store Manager Joe Rudman, and then for the nastiest, most vile and heinous person I have ever had the displeasure to know, Mr. Jim Novak. Alpha Beta was one of the first grocery store chains, originating in 1917. The name came from their innovation to stock items alphabetically, but that was soon abandoned when, as the story goes, it was discovered that customers did not appreciate finding their anchovy paste sitting on a shelf next to ant powder, two items which were undoubtedly on EVERYONE’S grocery list.
Mr. Novak was a horrible man who made grocery clerks cry, threatened to fire employees on a daily basis, was rude and hostile to customers, and who smoked cigars in the store during business hours. He loved to pick on me, in particular, and made my life a living hell. My favorite moment was when he and a female shopper got into an argument, and he inexplicably placed the woman in a headlock. As she flailed around clawing at his face, he punched her repeatedly in the head, and they crashed through the glass doors onto the sidewalk outside, while workers and customers stood frozen in disbelief. She managed to worm out of the headlock and out of her sweater at the same time, and while she staggered around in her bra, stunned, her boyfriend jumped out of his car, and smashed Jim across the cranium with his arm, which was in a cast, knocking Jim unconscious. The couple sped away, and nobody – absolutely nobody – went out to help Jim. We eventually called 911, and they took him away on a stretcher, but he returned several weeks later (in a neck brace), to continue tormenting us for many more years, including at the 1990 remodel, which was profiled in the company magazine (below). That’s me, leaning on the gum racks.
HIGH SCHOOL DRAMA No, not the kind of high school drama you would expect from teenagers trying to understand the world and each other. Actual High School Drama, as in live three-quarter round staged theatre. I was very involved in theatre throughout my high school years, and even earned a letter for the letter jacket I never owned (partially because letter jackets were worn by jocks, of which I was not one, and because the letter itself had the word “Drama” stitched into it, which would have probably gotten me beaten to a pulp at some point). But I was Thespian of the Year several years in a row, and starred in many plays and revues, including the two pictured below. And based on the misspellings, my high school must have not been a grade A educational institution!
THE MAN WHO CAME TO DINNER – Wow! Our “frist” dinner theatre. Nothing quite as awesome as watching a play while dining on high school cafeteria food, I bet! What I recall most from this production, was that the pine-scented spirit gum holding the mustache I wore (not pictured) didn’t hold, and my mustache kept peeling off. Every time I went off stage, the crew liberally applied more glue, but to no avail. Finally, during the last act, I tired of the effort to keep the facial hair affixed to my upper lip, and added to the line of dialogue “My headache has gone with the wind” the aside “…along with my mustache!” as I tore off the mustache and tossed it over my shoulder, to the cheers and applause of the audience, who had suffered along with me throughout the performance the trials and tribulations of a mustache trying to escape.
SLEUTH – Yipes. More hair aesthetics. How groovy. And a three-piece suit, to boot. This was actually a great play that starred (SPOILER ALERT!) only two persons but fooled the audience into thinking that there were many more, through disguises and misdirection. My best memory from this production is the inept special effects crew. There is a scene in which I shoot a painting on the left side of the stage, knocking it from the wall, and then shoot a sculpture of an airplane on a bookshelf to the right of the stage, blowing it to pieces. The crew, hidden backstage, would pull out the hanger of the painting from behind the wall which would cause it to fall to the floor when I “shot” at it, and yank a cord on the sculpture from behind the bookcase causing it to “explode” when I “shot” at it. But during the first performance, for some unexplained reason (they were probably stoned), the crew reversed the order, and when I shot the painting on the left, the sculpture on the right blew up. Without missing a beat, I turned and shot at the broken sculpture causing the painting on the left to drop. The perplexed audience, I can only imagine, must have presumed I was demonstrating my character’s ability at trick-shots.
About Crawford (Extra)
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Trouble in Disneyland
Whose kid did that? Wait – – that was MINE?!?
1982 Road Trip
1976 Road Trip
What’s it all about, Alphy?
High School Drama
My Cherry High School Ride
Arizona DES Website Story About Crawford
PHOTO CAPTION WINNER!
In October 1975, when I was 15, I submitted a photo caption for a contest held by a local publication in Tucson, Arizona called the “Mountain Newsreal,” and won. Hard to believe they actually published it.
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Trouble in Disneyland
The first time I heard about Disneyland was in 1969 when I was in fourth grade, from a kid whose family went there on vacation, and I didn’t even know he was talking about Disneyland because he never mentioned the name of the place. He just said that it was this really cool amusement park where you could go there for days and days and still not see everything there was to see. He said it had robot pirates and jungle animals, spaceships and submarines you could ride in, cowboys and Indians and horses, a haunted house, boats and canoes and an island, a giant snow-covered mountain with a roller coaster inside, and fireworks every night. Even though we had just recently landed a man on the moon, it still sounded too unbelievable to be true, and I thought he was exaggerating. At that point, growing up in Tucson, the only amusement parks I had ever seen were the supermarket parking lot kind, and you could be done with those in an hour or two. You certainly did not need several days to get through those rusty, dilapidated puke inducers, usually operated by unsavory, shifty-eyed, chain smoking gentlemen trying to make a few bucks while out on prison furlough.
Later, I learned he was telling the truth, and the magical place was called Disneyland. It even had its own weekly one-hour color commercial every Sunday night on TV (which I watched on the same black and white set on which I watched astronauts step foot on the lunar surface), hosted by the original Willie Wonka himself, Walt Disney. I dreamed of someday going there, and I will dismiss the suspense right up front by telling you that ultimately I did go there, and, in fact, in my lifetime I have visited this happy, enchanted theme park more than seventy-five times, even joining the crowds during Disneyland’s 30th, 50th, and 60th anniversaries.
But this is not a tale of merriment, and wholesome experiences with Mickey and Donald and Goofy of which I wish to tell. It is a story – several stories, in fact – of the kingdom as seen through the reality of menstrual periods and projectile vomiting, and how I, in my teenage years, darkened and soiled the hallowed grounds of many a childhood memory with my rebel escapades.
No Tampons in the Park
On one visit with my first wife in the 1980s, she began cramping and we went on a search for sanitary napkins, hitting every bathroom and vendor we could find, but to no avail. Finally we wound up at the first aid center, where we had the pleasure of sitting and listening to staff conduct searches for tampons over their walkie talkies, along with every other giggling and snickering guest who happened to be in the room. My wife was quite humiliated. Eventually, the staff were a bit embarrassed, as well, when they were forced to disclose to us that there was not a single feminine hygiene product anywhere to be found in any of the Lands, and they had to send a cast member to a nearby Ralph’s grocery store to buy her some. On the bright side, we were given free tickets to come back and enjoy Periodland on another day.
Paint the Hotel Room
When my youngest son was small, he did what all children should probably never do at Disneyland, and that is lick a handrail. A handrail that has been touched by more than a million germ ridden fingers from all over the world. This resulted in an awful lot of regurgitation. There were nine of us frugally crammed into a Best Western hotel room, and when he began to violently hurl over and over, so did everyone else. All night long and much of the next day. Some slept in closets, another in the bathtub, in an attempt to stay away from the technicolor spray as much as possible, but much like dominoes fall one after the other, once one person started spewing, others followed. It was never ending. At the time, none of us knew about the handrail, so we thought it was from something we had eaten at the Golden Horseshoe Review, like warm Ranch dressing or overpriced mozzarella sticks, so we alerted Disneyland officials about a potential health hazard and informed them they had given us food poisoning. Because we missed several days of visiting the park while holed up in toilet bowl rotation, we were given free tickets to come back and enjoy Bacterialand on another day.
The Hippiest Place on Earth
Flashback to the 1970s, and most of my friends and I dabbled in our own form of amusement park rides through the heavy use of weed and pills and mushrooms and peyote and cocaine and alcohol, only occasionally stopping to churn out some school work or ingest vast quantities of chocolate milk and Hostess pastries. It was during this time that my girlfriend’s parents took us to Disneyland, and we went stocked with a pretty fair amount of cocaine. We would each excuse ourselves to the separate bathrooms and lock ourselves in a stall, where we cut the powder on tiny mirrors balanced on our legs and snorted lines through straws torn in half. At one point, my stall door was not locked all the way, and it slowly swung open. I looked up to see several children in their mouse ears waiting their turn, just staring at me. I quickly closed the door, and continued my business. Finally, her parents began to wonder why we had to keep using the bathroom so much, and why both of us always needed to go at the exact same time, and we were forced to tell them the god awful truth: we had explosive diarrhea. They were a bit concerned because we had all eaten the same food all day and they felt just fine, but we brushed off their skepticism, because, frankly, we were too high to care or come up with a better story, and neither of us actually thought about saying we had licked a handrail.
On another occasion, but this time with my parents, we found some really fun places to smoke up, such as in the Haunted Mansion ride with my three-year-old half-brother sitting between us, and in a Skyway gondola, where we had to duck down and hide when we noticed my dad and stepmom coming toward us from the other direction.
On a different trip to the resort with my girlfriends parent’s and also a buddy of ours, we got high all over the park, even toking inside the fossil cave on Tom Sawyer’s Island while kids and their parents adventured past through our clouds of smoke. Toward the end of the day we had ran out of dope, and were just standing around by a bench in a faraway corner of Tomorrowland. Our buddy pulled out the empty pipe and puffed on it one last time. Suddenly, we were pounced on by a flurry of suited men wearing sunglasses, and whisked away to an underground area, probably called Securityland. We were forced to sit on our hands and not speak to one another while we awaited interrogation. When my girlfriend spit out her gum in a sand-filled ashtray nearby, an agent ran over and sifted through the sand and butts looking for the evil contraband he believed she had been smuggling in her mouth. We were called in one at a time to give our stories. They searched through my girlfriend’s purse. She had bottles of vitamins which they suspected might be hallucinogenic pills. She also carried a bottle of isopropyl alcohol and cotton balls which she used to cleanse the California smog away from her skin, and, of course, they asked her where she was hiding the hypodermic needles and heroin. As it turned out, each of us accidentally told the exact same story – that we had found the pipe just laying there on the ground, and it wasn’t ours – so they let us go, but they did eject us from the park. We were escorted out to the dark parking area somewhere in lot Z as in “Zip-a-dee-doo-dah,” by burly guys in shades who looked like they had just stepped out of one of the Matrix films. When we told her parents later about our innocent little misstep and how horribly we had been treated by the big bad men who hide behind the curtain, her dad was so upset that he called and complained to the Disneyland management.
And we were given free tickets to come back and enjoy Druggyland on another day.
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Whose kid did that? Wait – – that was MINE?!?
When someone’s child does something unexpected and outrageous, bringing unwanted attention and embarrassment to their parents, it is awkward, but also extremely delightful to watch, because it’s not your child and it’s not you. And then there are those moments when it turns out to be your child, and the spotlight is suddenly on you. Those moments: not much fun. Years ago, our family was enjoying the Haunted Mansion ride in Disneyland, when it suddenly came to a stop. An announcement came over the loudspeaker informing us that someone had inadvertently caused the “doom buggies” to halt, but that the ride would resume shortly. I turned to my wife and joked, “Man, I hope that wasn’t our kid!” Much to my dismay, it was. Our little boy had decided part way through the attraction that he wanted to ride with mommy and daddy, so he tried to climb out of the doom buggy, deploying the safety bar. The incident probably wouldn’t have been so bad had it not repeated itself several years later ON THE SAME RIDE, but with a different child, this time involving a nose that began bleeding and would not stop. On that occasion, all guests had to depart their doom buggies and walk through the dark to the exit, as the Disney cast members shut down the Haunted Mansion for the remainder of the day, presumably so that Haz Mat could bleach down the building. As we left, Mickey Mouse actually kicked me in the shin and cursed at us. It totally sucked.
The worst public place in which to have your kid go nuts is probably church. One of our sons, when he was about three years old, walked up to the front where a member was giving a Sunday School lesson and grabbed the member’s watch, which the member had set down in front of him to keep track of his talk. Our son came back to his seat, proudly holding the stolen timepiece. I sheepishly walked back up and replaced the watch, while another church member gave our boy a bag of Cheerios to distract our boy and keep him busy. And it certainly did keep him busy, as he then began throwing the Cheerios one at a time at the speaker, with astonishingly accurate aim. No parents ever hunched down lower in their pew then we did that morning.
On another Sunday, his younger brother sat quietly as sacrament was passed. As the tray of bread went by, he took a piece, but then suddenly grabbed at the tray, spilling the bread everywhere while screaming, “I WANT MORE SANDWICHES! I WANT MORE SANDWICHES!”
My daughter has always been less inclined than her brothers to create scenes. She was, however, quite the scamp when she was younger, doing things like loading up the swing set with grapes to dry in the sun so she could make raisins, or doing her homework while perched on top of the refrigerator. She often slept with my shirt, because she said it smelled like her daddy, which made me feel very special. Then she embellished the compliment by telling me, “I like it because it smells like bacon!” Okaaaay. Weirdly, as an adult, bacon is one of her favorite things.
There was the time, though, when we were called in for a conference with her kindergarten teacher because my daughter had told a mean little black girl in her class who wanted to play with her that she couldn’t, because she was allergic to butterflies and black people.
She had the unique experience of growing up to work alongside and befriend her former first grade teacher, who enjoyed telling me stories about my daughter from their days together as teacher and student. Imagine how proud I was to hear that the teacher often worried about why my daughter’s hair was never brushed or why she always wore boots with no socks, making her feet smell something awful. This was illustrated by the cringe worthy tale of the day the students painted the bottoms of their feet to make foot prints on a school banner, and the teacher had gently suggested that my daughter wash her feet both before AND after the painting of their feet.
This does not mean that my daughter was left out of embarrassing incidents that involved her older brother. She was often the victim of his activities, many of which involved escaping our home. When he was around five, on the first day we moved into a new city, and while we were busy unloading trucks, my son disappeared, and nobody knew where he had gone. We frantically searched the unfamiliar neighborhood, gathering strangers along the way who volunteered to help us look, including a water delivery truck driver and several police officers. As it grew darker, and we grew more frightened, my son came riding down the sidewalk pedaling a toy fire engine behind a lady who asked if he was the child for whom we were searching. The lady told us that my son had knocked on her door and asked if he could visit with the kids he had heard playing in her backyard, and thinking that he was another child her kids usually hung around with, she had let him in to the backyard. Later, she heard the commotion in the street of people out looking for him, and realized that he was the missing boy, so she made sure that both he and his toy fire engine returned safely home. Except …. the fire engine was not his. We never did learn where it came from.
After living in the new home for a while, we received a knock on the door one morning around 5:30. I crawled out of bed wondering who would be knocking on our door at this ungodly hour, and opened it to find a policeman standing there with my three-year-old daughter. The officer had discovered her alone at a park several blocks away, playing in the dark on the playground. She told him that her brother had taken her to the park, but left when he got tired, and she wanted to stay and keep playing, so she didn’t leave with him. She then showed the officer where she lived. I looked in my son’s bedroom, and he was in bed fast asleep. I was shocked, and desperately began trying to convince the officer that I was an attentive parent who guarded my children safely and would never allow them to be endangered, but he looked at me like I was just another self-involved male who should never have been allowed to procreate, and advised me to put some extra locks on the door.
Which we did. But then a few days later came another knocking on the door at 5:30 in the morning, and once again, when I opened it, there stood the policeman and my daughter. This time, my son had helped her crawl out of their bedroom window to escape, and once again he had left the park to come back home to return to bed before she was done playing. I was sure I was going to jail, but he let me off with a warning. As he left, he looked at my little girl, chuckled and said, “This one sure is a pistol. You gotta make sure you hang on to her.”
So, we nailed the bedroom window shut and prayed that the house never caught on fire. We put more locks on the front door. We strung empty tin cans across the front yard to warn us if they tried to leave. Well, we didn’t really do that, but we did put locks on the gate to our backyard, so that when they went out back to play, they couldn’t try to escape.
But my clever son quickly learned how to remove enough slats in the wooden fence to squeeze through, and once again they were caught unattended at the park.
As parents, we all have stories of moments in which our offspring have appalled and humiliated us, and I certainly could go on, but instead I leave you with this tale, so horrifying that I will use vague references so as not to embarrass the child in question, who is of course now much older, and who probably has friends who visit this web site. However, it is I who should be the most embarrassed, as you will soon see. I will admit that it was one of my three sons for whom this happened, because frankly, if it had been my daughter, I probably would have given her up for adoption shortly afterward.
My son was young at the time of this event, but definitely old enough to know better. We were at his sibling’s end of year soccer party, held at a lovely park. The soccer sibling called my attention to the fact that said child was standing at a nearby tree, pants down around his knees, peeing on the tree, right out in the open and in front of all the soccer players, their parents and assorted family members. My mouth dropped open, and I immediately did what any right-thinking parent with an ounce of dignity would do. I grabbed the hands of the siblings and headed for the car to leave. My son saw me leaving, and hurriedly began trying to catch up to us, his pants still down, making it hard for him to walk. “Dad!” he shouted. “Wait for me!” “Don’t look back,” I admonished his brothers and sister. “Keep moving!” As I unlocked the car, and we began jumping in, I heard him yell, “Dad! I pooped my pants!” I glanced back, and here came this little boy toward me, one hand holding up his pants and the other coming out from behind his back, covered in poop. “Quick!” I shouted. “Lock the doors!” As I started the engine, a hand suddenly slapped against the driver’s side window, leaving a large brown handprint on the glass. “Dad! Where are you going? I pooped my pants!” My shoulders drooped in defeat, and I turned off the engine, deciding to rise to the challenge of being a good parent amidst the worst of times. I opened the door, and got out to help him. As I cleaned him up in a nearby rain puddle, he turned to me and said, “Thanks, Dad. I love you, Dad. Where were you going, Dad?” And I thought to myself, I was going to hell, pal. But I said, “Nowhere without you, buddy. And I love you, too.”
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1982 Road Trip
In 1982, I was a college student living in Pasadena with my roommate when I received in the mail a postcard stating that if I attended a 90 minute presentation I would take home one of four amazing prizes: $1000 in cash, a diamond ring worth $500, a brand new home video cassette recorder, or a mystery prize worth $100. This seemed too good to be true, but the fine print promised that there was no cost to me and no obligation to buy anything. All I had to do was call and set up an appointment. I made the call and was told that to get my prize, I needed to sit down with a salesman who would talk about the merits and advantages of a timeshare opportunity their company was offering. I explained I was a student with no money and bad credit, and the lady stated that she understood. “It’s all right,” she said. “We just need to make our quota and fill the appointments. There is no pressure to buy anything, and you definitely will leave with one of the four magnificent prizes we are giving away.” The little map on the reverse of the postcard showed that the location of the presentation was just down the highway from Pasadena, so with dreams of possibly putting a thousand dollars in my pocket, I scheduled the appointment, and asked my roommate if I could borrow his car.
The car was a real beat-up piece of garbage. My roommate made me promise to keep an eye on the water since the radiator leaked (“Don’t let it run dry and warp the head!” he warned me, whatever that meant) and pick him up that night from his job (“I’m off work at 10 PM.” “Don’t worry,” I said. “I’m leaving at 3:00. It can’t take that long for me to get back.”), and with that I took off on my first solo road trip in California.
It didn’t take long for me to realize that there was more to this than just getting on Interstate 10 and driving until I saw the exit at which to get off, like it described in the directions and map on the postcard. The map made it look like the exit was just a few miles or so away, but after more than an hour of driving, I began to get a sinking feeling that something was wrong. I pulled off at a gas station, and asked the attendant for help, who peered at the postcard, and chuckled a little. “You do realize that you are headed to Palm Springs, right?” he said. “Is that close by?” I asked. “Nope,” he smiled. “You still got a ways to go.”
This was alarming news. I was not prepared for such an excursion. I did not bring any money, and the car had a half a tank of gas left. But I had come this far, and undaunted, decided to forge ahead and get my prize.
Another hour or two later and I finally arrived at the location, but was told I was too late to attend the presentation. I had missed my appointment, and they, in fact, were closing down for the day. When the lady learned that I had traveled almost four hours from Pasadena to get there, she took pity, and said I would still get my prize. She handed me a small green metal box. I opened it to find inside a 50-piece ratchet set. My heart sank. This was not quite the prize I had hoped for.
I headed back to Pasadena. By now, it was starting to get dark. After a few hours I noticed that the fuel gauge was on empty, and I broke out in sweat. I had no idea how much longer I had before I reached home, and I had no money for gas. I thought about pulling over and seeing if someone was willing to buy the ratchet set off me, but instead I did what I thought would extend the number of miles I could travel on what little gas was left: I lifted my foot off the gas pedal and coasted until I almost came to a stop, then applied gas until I got back up to 55 miles per hour, and then lifted my foot off the gas pedal and coasted again. I repeated this until just outside of Los Angeles, when I was pulled over by a police officer, who informed me that I could no longer drive on the highway in this manner. He suggested I exit and look for someone in the city who could help me get more gasoline.
I drove into downtown L.A. and coasted to a stop in front of a huge building. It turned out to be the headquarters for the Los Angeles Times. The building was locked up for the night, but a security guard listened to my story, let me in, and led me up to the third floor which was bustling with reporters working at their desks, and introduced me to the night editor.
The night editor was gruff and grumpy, and eyed me suspiciously while I explained what had happened to me. In hindsight, I must have seemed like some sort of moron. He handed me a phone. “I’m not giving you any money,” he growled, “but you can call somebody to come get you.”
This proved to be a predicament, as I knew virtually no one in California. So, I called my dad in Tucson, Arizona, who called a friend of his in San Bernardino, who said he was willing to drive to Los Angeles to lend me some money. At this point, the night editor looked like his head was going to explode. He said, “Are you kidding me? You’re going to let that guy drive all the way down here to put gas in your car?” He got up from his desk, grabbed his coat, and motioned me to follow. “Jesus H. Christ, come on. I ain’t giving you money, but I’ll take you and get you some gas!” So, he drove behind me in his car to the nearest gas station, where he put $5.00 worth of unleaded into my tank. I took his name and address and promised I would repay him when I got home (which I did), but he snorted and muttered “I’m not going to ever see that money again,” and drove away into the night.
I got back on the freeway, and felt relieved that I would finally be able to get home. It was at that moment that smoke began to pour out from under the hood, and the temperature gauge showed that the engine was heating up. I pulled over, thinking the engine had caught on fire, but quickly realized that it was steam, not smoke, coming out, and remembered my roommate’s warning. He had also cautioned me about adding water when the motor was hot, saying it could crack the transmission, or something like that, so I waited 20 minutes for everything to cool down. Then I grabbed one of the jugs of water from the backseat, filled the radiator, and continued driving. Several miles later, steam began billowing out again. I pulled over, and repeated the process of waiting until the car was cool and then adding water. However, after two or three more times of this happening, I got more and more impatient to get home, and the time spent waiting for the engine to cool down grew shorter and shorter, until finally I was just adding water directly into the hot radiator. This would prove later to not be such a good idea.
It was 1:00 in the morning when I pulled up to my apartment. I didn’t even bother going to my roommate’s work, since he would have left there hours ago. What I didn’t know was that his house key was on the same key ring as his car key. So not only did he have to walk several miles to get home, he was locked out and had been sitting on the steps for three hours or longer. Needless to say he was not happy, and demanded that I split the prize with him. I showed him the 50-piece ratchet set, and said he could have 25 pieces. He stared at me.
I wish I could say that my Road Trip to Hell had a happy ending, but things only got worse the next day when my roommate learned that he need a new transmission because I had destroyed the head.
The up side, though, was that there was a nifty ratchet set that he could use to fix the car.
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1976 Road Trip
The summer of 1976 was the pinnacle of the Unites States of America Bicentennial celebration. Everywhere you looked, we were reminded of this historic Independence Day, and every possible bit of merchandise was branded in red, white and blue. The summer of 1976 was also when I would end my sophomore year of high school, turn 16, get my driver’s license, and embark on the road trip toward my own Independence Day. But first, a very different road trip had been planned for me by my Dad and Stepmom to help postpone that day of reckoning.
It was a trip to San Diego, in a large RV, with my younger brother in tow. As we drove through California, we sat at the kitchen table of the RV looking out the window while playing cards, and listening to the same big hits of the day being played relentlessly over and over on our transistor radio: “Afternoon Delight” by the Starland Vocal Band, “Let ‘Em In” by the Wings, mixed in with The Beach Boys’ “Graduation Day” and Alice Cooper’s “School’s Out,” because school was just getting out for the kids who lived in California. We were headed to a trailer park in Mission Bay. We were beyond miserable.
We stopped for lunch and parked in some vacant lot near the beach. While sandwiches were being prepared, my brother and I decided to leave the RV and walk around to explore the area. Much to our surprise, we found an abandoned amusement park nearby. Construction workers were in the act of demolishing rides and buildings. We walked right through the gates without anyone stopping us.
It was creepy as all get out. Snack bars stood intact, with their menu boards of offerings and prices covered in dust and cobwebs. A lonely roller coaster stretched up toward the sky. Rusty cars for smaller kiddie rides sat on dilapidated rails. Splintered boardwalks guarded by wooden railings badly in need of repair lay flattened across the weed-covered dirt by the ghosts of the many people who had walked them in the past. Ticket booths scattered the grounds like spooky sentinels with their glass faces shattered and broken. Trash cans were overflowing with aged food wrappers and drinking cups. Shredded flags and banners flapped overhead in the breeze, disturbing the unearthly silence, even though the soundtrack of the ocean eerily played in the background.
We headed toward a Fun House, and walked through the deserted queue toward the entrance. A huge smiling clown face stared back at us, it’s faded and peeling paint making it look even more sinister than it normally would, and we stepped through the door into the darkness. Sunlight shined through the cracks between the wooden planks in the walls, illuminating the inside corridors. We were startled to see that everything was more or less intact. To the right were a row of twisted mirrors, and we watched in the dust-covered glass our bodies morph and change shape into silly versions of ourselves as we walked past. Next we zig-zagged through a maze of glass panes and mirrors. It was a tight-fit, and the wooden floor below was warped and rotting. The musty smell was overpowering. We were greatly relieved when we finally came out the other side into a small room. A broken exit sign dangled on a wire from above, mocking us. In the corners of the room were discarded clothes, bottles and cans, and signs that small fires had once burned here and there. My mind conjured up images of the types of people who had used this room and for what purposes – homeless beach bums seeking shelter, promiscuous teenagers looking for a place in which to make out, drug addicts settling down after copping their fix. It gave me the shivers to think that to someone or some persons this was their hangout, and we were invaders who were clearly trespassing. We moved on to the huge wooden tunnel.
The tunnel was slick and polished. At one time, it spun while park customers attempted to walk through it without falling down and tumbling around like a pair of socks in a dryer. We were able to spin the tunnel with our hands, and amused ourselves for a while. Then we headed to the Fun House exit, a long wooden slide which ended on a hard rubber mat outside. The slide was full of splinters, so we did not dare to sit down and scoot our way out. We walked around the amusement park a little while longer, but it became more sad and depressing each minute to be swallowed up in this decaying time capsule that once sparked joy and laughter, but now sat dead and gloomy in stark contrast to the bright blue sky, the lively sunshine, and the inviting beach nearby. I later learned that this was Belmont Park, built in 1925 by wealthy sugar magnate John D Spreckles. The 2,600 foot long roller coaster was the famed Giant Dipper. Belmont Park was immensely popular in the 30’s, 40’s and 50’s, but fell into disrepair in the 60’s and 70’s, eventually closing down in 1976. In 1989, a new developer took over and restored the park, paying over two million dollars to fix the Giant Dipper, and today Belmont Park is up and running once again.
We spent the remainder of the vacation in a trailer park by Mission Bay. In the evenings, my brother and I would stand outside of a nearby 7-11 trying to get strangers to buy beer for us, and then would sit on the beach drinking Pabst Blue Ribbon out of cans hidden in paper bags, just like the real winos did. One night, we actually got someone to sell us a small baggie of the worst pot on this planet, complete with an orange peel inside to keep the seeds and stems moist, since that is what it was mostly comprised of. Later, he and I were sitting in the sand, when a friendly dude approached us and offered us more beer. We obliged. My brother left to go back to the trailer, and the guy moved closer to me. He began complimenting me on a huge ugly Budweiser belt buckle I was wearing which I had borrowed from my brother, even reaching out several times to touch it. Then he invited me to meet him the next morning at the bus stop, to take a trip with him up to Blacks Beach, a popular nudist beach. I started to get nervous, and declined. When he asked me to go the shower house and take a shower with him, I immediately left and went back to the RV. I woke up my dad, and told him what happened, which in hindsight probably was not the wisest move to make, since I reeked of beer. But my dad could see that I was scared and upset, and so he became upset, too, and walked me back to the beach to look for the guy, who of course was no longer there (he probably was in the shower house soaping up some other unsuspecting teenager). The next morning, I saw the guy standing at the bus stop as a bus drove up. The sign on the bus said “Blacks Beach.”
Road trips build memories, and reflecting back on those memories can change hearts. Looking back over the years, that trip to San Diego turned out to be a pretty good start to the great Independence Day of 1976. Yankee Doodle Doo.
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What’s it all about, Alphy?
WHAT’S IT ALL ABOUT, ALPHY?
I spent many long years working at Alpha Beta grocery store number 175 in Pasadena, California, starting out as a courtesy clerk (or box boy) and promoting to night manager (or PIC – Person in Charge), first for Store Manager Joe Rudman, and then for the nastiest, most vile and heinous person I have ever had the displeasure to know, Mr. Jim Novak. Alpha Beta was one of the first grocery store chains, originating in 1917. The name came from their innovation to stock items alphabetically, but that was soon abandoned when, as the story goes, it was discovered that customers did not appreciate finding their anchovy paste sitting on a shelf next to ant powder, two items which were undoubtedly on EVERYONE’S grocery list.
Mr. Novak was a horrible man who made grocery clerks cry, threatened to fire employees on a daily basis, was rude and hostile to customers, and who smoked cigars in the store during business hours. He loved to pick on me, in particular, and made my life a living hell. My favorite moment was when he and a female shopper got into an argument, and he inexplicably placed the woman in a headlock. As she flailed around clawing at his face, he punched her repeatedly in the head, and they crashed through the glass doors onto the sidewalk outside, while workers and customers stood frozen in disbelief. She managed to worm out of the headlock and out of her sweater at the same time, and while she staggered around in her bra, stunned, her boyfriend jumped out of his car, and smashed Jim across the cranium with his arm, which was in a cast, knocking Jim unconscious. The couple sped away, and nobody – absolutely nobody – went out to help Jim. We eventually called 911, and they took him away on a stretcher, but he returned several weeks later (in a neck brace), to continue tormenting us for many more years, including at the 1990 remodel, which was profiled in the company magazine (below). That’s me, leaning on the gum racks.
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High School Drama
HIGH SCHOOL DRAMA
No, not the kind of high school drama you would expect from teenagers trying to understand the world and each other. Actual High School Drama, as in live three-quarter round staged theatre. I was very involved in theatre throughout my high school years, and even earned a letter for the letter jacket I never owned (partially because letter jackets were worn by jocks, of which I was not one, and because the letter itself had the word “Drama” stitched into it, which would have probably gotten me beaten to a pulp at some point). But I was Thespian of the Year several years in a row, and starred in many plays and revues, including the two pictured below. And based on the misspellings, my high school must have not been a grade A educational institution!
THE MAN WHO CAME TO DINNER – Wow! Our “frist” dinner theatre. Nothing quite as awesome as watching a play while dining on high school cafeteria food, I bet! What I recall most from this production, was that the pine-scented spirit gum holding the mustache I wore (not pictured) didn’t hold, and my mustache kept peeling off. Every time I went off stage, the crew liberally applied more glue, but to no avail. Finally, during the last act, I tired of the effort to keep the facial hair affixed to my upper lip, and added to the line of dialogue “My headache has gone with the wind” the aside “…along with my mustache!” as I tore off the mustache and tossed it over my shoulder, to the cheers and applause of the audience, who had suffered along with me throughout the performance the trials and tribulations of a mustache trying to escape.
SLEUTH – Yipes. More hair aesthetics. How groovy. And a three-piece suit, to boot. This was actually a great play that starred (SPOILER ALERT!) only two persons but fooled the audience into thinking that there were many more, through disguises and misdirection. My best memory from this production is the inept special effects crew. There is a scene in which I shoot a painting on the left side of the stage, knocking it from the wall, and then shoot a sculpture of an airplane on a bookshelf to the right of the stage, blowing it to pieces. The crew, hidden backstage, would pull out the hanger of the painting from behind the wall which would cause it to fall to the floor when I “shot” at it, and yank a cord on the sculpture from behind the bookcase causing it to “explode” when I “shot” at it. But during the first performance, for some unexplained reason (they were probably stoned), the crew reversed the order, and when I shot the painting on the left, the sculpture on the right blew up. Without missing a beat, I turned and shot at the broken sculpture causing the painting on the left to drop. The perplexed audience, I can only imagine, must have presumed I was demonstrating my character’s ability at trick-shots.
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My Cherry High School Ride
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Arizona DES Website Story About Crawford
See “5 Things I Learned from My Single Dad”!
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