Forgotten Vacations

When I was blogging about my childhood I left out a couple of fairly memorable vacations... Yeah - I somehow managed to forget about a couple of memorable events :-)

The first one was a trip to Chicago (from St. Louis) when I was four years old. Dad had some business there so we all drove up for a few days and stayed at a hotel within walking distance of the Museum of Science and Industry.
On the way there we passed through the south side of Chicago on surface streets - this was before the interstates. There had been a car accident and we were stuck in a traffic jam in the "Black Belt". It was a hot day and tempers were short. A crowd had gathered around the wrecked cars and there was a lot of yelling and my parents were visibly afraid... I was really taken aback by that - that's why I remember it so vividly... I'd never seen my parents afraid of anything before :-)

Aside: That reminds me of another incident about that same general time... Dad took me to downtown St. Louis one Saturday and stopped in front of a building to run a quick errand. He left me in the front seat and mentioned that he was leaving the keys in the ignition because the car was illegally parked...
And a couple of minutes later a black man in a uniform got into the driver seat and told me we needed to go for a short drive. In retrospect it is obvious that he was the building's doorman - I bet dad even asked him to keep an eye on me - but at the time I had no clue who he was or what he was doing in our car.
He was trying to be very reassuring and comforting - probably because he saw the expression on my face :-) I'm sure the last thing he needed was some little cracker freaking out and screaming about being kidnapped... But I really was freaked out - I'd been raised to be very wary of strangers... Still - I managed to keep calm as he started the car... I was sooo relieved when he only moved it forward into a space that had opened up.
When dad got back I told him what had happened and he said he had expected that... And I was thinking " You left me in the car alone knowing that a stranger would probably get in and drive??? And you didn't make that absolutely clear to me??? You have got to be sh*tting me!!!" Parents are so clueless sometimes... But I digress :-)

The main thing I remember about that Chicago trip was the Museum of Science and Industry. I have always loved that kind of stuff. Even though most of it was beyond my comprehension I was still completely amazed by it. The thing that impressed me the most was the German U-boat. I could not believe that people actually went underwater in that thing. It was so dark and cramped - quite scary, actually :-)
Oh - and there was also a machine where you put in a penny and turned a crank and it changed it into a "Chicago Museum of Science and Industry" medallion. It was magic :-)

The other vacation I forgot to mention was to Lake Brantingham in the Adirondacks. This was in the summer of 1963 when we lived in Philadelphia. Apparently an acquaintance of my father's owned the old Inn on the lake (no longer there) and told my father he'd give us a "special" deal. I guess they didn't discuss the details because I remember dad's reaction when we got the bill in the mail afterward. Apparently the deal was a lot more "special" for the friend than it was for us :-)

Something really strange happened on the way there: Dad asked mom for a cigarette and she picked up her purse and fumbled around for a minute and said "I know I put 2 packs in here before we left but now I can't find them!". She handed her purse back to my sister and I and we looked and found nothing. We searched the car - on the floor - under the seats... Still nothing... So we stopped at a store up the road to buy some more smokes - and when mom opened her purse to pay - there were the two packs - right on top...
Dad was certain it was one of Karina's practical jokes, but if she had done it I sure didn't see it... Now - I certainly don't believe the cigarettes actually disappeared and reappeared... (That is theoretically possible according to Heisenberg but is astonishingly unlikely.) I just think that our perception of reality is not as "solid" as we like to think. It's just odd that 3 people failed to see something that they were looking for even though it was apparently there... Or maybe things really do disappear... How else do you explain all those unmatched socks? But I digress again :-)

We arrived late in the evening during one of the worst storms I'd ever seen. The Inn was not that easy to find under ideal conditions and I remember dad having to get out of the car at each intersection to look at the signs because it was raining so hard the wipers were useless. There were a couple of fishermen in the Inn's restaurant who had gotten caught on the lake during the wind and rain. They said they felt lucky to have made it back to shore...
I also recall that the restaurant had one of those shuffle puck bowling machines. I'd never seen one before and I was fascinated by it. (I've always liked pinball machines. I still own one - but it's not working at the moment.)

I think we were the only people staying at the Inn... I would get up around sunrise and head out to the lake. It was dead calm in the mornings - quite beautiful... It was perfect "rock skipping" conditions. I had never quite been able to get the hang of it before but by the time we left I was routinely getting 7 to 10 skips :-) I also remember that there lots a hiking trails and chipmunks everywhere.
There was also a golf course. It was in pretty sad shape at the time but it was still playable. That was the first and only time I ever played golf. I was left-handed but all we could come up with was a set of right-handed adult clubs - that made it especially challenging for me. I did manage to shoot a 108 - but we didn't play the back nine... We had just about run out of balls anyway :-)
Whenever I completely whiffed a shot dad would give me a "mulligan". But when he blew a shot he wanted one too. I didn't get it... I was a 10 year old who had never played before and was using "wrong-handed" clubs... He was an adult who had been playing for years and was using proper clubs. Yet he somehow felt we should be treated equally with respect to errant shots... Like I said - I didn't get it - still don't... That was just the way he was...

It just now occurred to me that the Lake Brantingham trip was our last family vacation. Dad was out of work by the next spring and then my parent's split up...

Yeah - it was a good time...

A Moment on the Edge

This is another one of those things I've been hesitant to write about...

In January of 1969 we were still living in that apartment on Camino Del Sol in La Jolla - and I was still attending La Jolla High School... Yeah - that was my personal nightmare. Most days I either stayed home or took a stiff drink before getting on the bus... I needed it :-)
I pretty much kept to myself back then... Mom had her own circle of "interesting" friends. It wasn't hard to find people who were into astrology, numerology, UFOs and the paranormal in San Diego at the time - and they adored my mother... Karina was still doing the Scientology thing. She was involved with a number of guys and was taking pretty much whatever drugs she came across. (Except for those that required a needle - she wouldn't go there.) ... And - as usual - I was just along for the ride...

Mom and Karina would fight about anything and everything and every once in a while I got drawn into it... One evening there was a huge argument. I no longer remember what it was about but I do remember that some really nasty things were said and I was deeply hurt. I simply couldn't handle it any more so I walked out the door...

I had always envisioned that I would go to college and/or be a rock star and marry a wonderful woman and have a great life... But at that point I woke up every morning wishing I was still asleep... I could not think of a single thing in my life that was going the way I thought it should... I was doing poorly in school - I had no friends - and I'd all but stopped playing the guitar (a huge mistake)... The gap between where I was and where I wanted to be seemed insurmountable and it was only getting wider with every passing day.
But the worst part was the uncertainty. It had been so long since there was any real stability in my life and every change just made things worse. Unless you suffer from anxiety or depression I don't think you can fathom just how extremely painful that uncertainty is... If you did you would never again question how people can end their own lives - you would do almost anything to make it go away...

And that's how I was feeling as I headed up the "coast walk" along the La Jolla cliffs and sat down on a rock ledge jutting out over the cove... I was watching the waves smash into the rocks below - all I needed to do was lean forward a couple of more inches and the pain would go away. Yeah - it might be replaced with a different kind of pain - or it might not. But at least everything would be different...

Then I heard a woman's voice behind me say "Young man... Are you alright?"

I turned around to find an elderly couple standing behind me. They had been taking a late night walk along the cliffs and noticed me "on the edge".
A lot went through my mind as I formulated my response... I was taken aback by the fact that a couple of total strangers had cared enough to ask. It instantly changed my perspective... I told them that I was OK - I just had a lot on my mind...
After a bit of back and forth they went on their way. I sat there and watched the waves in the moonlight for a couple of more minutes (it was really quite beautiful) and headed home - where mom and sis acted like nothing had happened :-)

It was a moment of extreme selfishness. You would never "go there" if you allowed yourself to think about how it would impact those around you. And thanks to those two strangers I never got a chance to find out how it would have ended...

I was seriously shaken over having allowed myself to get so close to the edge and I vowed never to take anything that seriously again... And I ended up with that wonderful life I thought was hopelessly out of reach at the time...

Well - not the "rock star" part - but all the rest of it :-)

Christmas 1968

Before I talk about Christmas in La Jolla I wanted to elaborate a bit on my mental state at the time:

I obviously had anxiety issues - and untreated anxiety leads to depression... But that kind of thing wasn't easy to admit back in the day - not even to yourself... (Yeah - they were still locking people up in asylums.)
I was keenly aware that I had difficulties with particular types of events and circumstances... But I saw them as nothing more than problems to be solved... So I "solved" them... My solutions were occasionally creative and frequently bizarre (like walking home from school rather than admitting I didn't know which bus to take) but the point is I always managed to get by (and at times even excel).

Yeah - when I encounter an obstacle my first instinct has always been to look for a way around it - even when it would be much easier to confront it head on :-) That's just the way I'm wired...

The point is that I had an easily treatable mental health problem - if I had only been willing to admit it... Enough said...

Now - on to Christmas:

The summer of 1968 had been one of the happiest of my life - It was a period of stability after moving to Germany then immigrating to Canada (in the midst of my parents' breakup)... But in September we went "mobile" again and by December we had moved 3 more times and I was attending my 3rd high school... Life was a mess... And I was a mess...

By the time Christmas rolled around mom had been (mostly) out of work for 4 months. We were living on child support plus whatever money my mom could talk my aunt out of. It wasn't much - and it definitely wasn't being spent wisely :-) So celebrating Christmas in the customary fashion was pretty much out of the question...

The day before Christmas Saint Paul the biker showed up at our apartment in La Jolla. When he found out that we didn't have a tree he took off and returned a short time later with one sticking out of the trunk of his 1953 Pontiac.
Now - Christmas trees don't usually come equipped with ornaments, lights and a stand so we had to inquire where he got it... He wouldn't say - but he did assure us that nobody would be missing their tree on Christmas eve. So we figured he probably snagged it from a building lobby...
Yeah - I guess the holidays got Saint Paul thinking about not having a family and that's why he came to visit - so we invited him to spend Christmas Eve on the couch...

On Christmas day Saint Paul, Karina and I headed into San Diego to see the movie "Hell's Angels on Wheels" (with Jack Nicholson). It was being shown in one of those huge old theaters and it was absolutely packed - mostly with bikers and sailors... And as it turns out, one of the key scenes in the movie involved a fatal altercation between bikers and sailors... So (as one might imagine) there was a lot of verbal interaction between the 2 groups in the audience... I was afraid it was going to escalate into actual violence - but it didn't (being Christmas and all).

While we were gone mom had prepared us a traditional Christmas dinner - Saint Paul had provided the turkey (we didn't ask)... Note that Saint Paul had also offered to "find" us some presents but we politely declined :-)

So - despite the lack of presents - it turned out to be a very nice (albeit unconventional) Christmas after all...

Onward to La Jolla

Before I talk about moving to La Jolla I wanted to mention that my cousin Janos' ex-wife has been visiting from Germany and I learned a few things I hadn't known before.

The first is how my aunt Margarete got the nickname Vesti:
Margarete was always very religious. Even as a teenager she attended church every day - and would have nothing to do with boys. One of her brothers (probably Mathias) joked that she should have been a Vestal virgin and started calling her Vesti... The nickname stuck... And I would have never guessed that's what it meant :-)

The next thing I didn't know is that Margarete was a track and field athlete on the Hungarian Olympic team for the 1936 Olympics in Berlin.
BTW: Most people are not aware that Hungary is one of the higher ranked countries in Olympic history. They finished third in Berlin (behind the U.S. and Germany) despite having a population smaller than Manhattan.
But Margarete injured her arm and ended up not being able to compete - however - she made some connections while in Berlin and was offered a teaching job at a girls' school in Potsdam. That is significant because if Margarete had not already been in Germany during WWII her sisters (including my mother) would not have fled there from Hungary and my mom would have never met my dad, etc, etc. So - yeah - I didn't know that about Vesti, but it doesn't surprise me :-)

The final thing I learned is that before Margarete passed away she terminated my grandmother and aunt's grave sites and donated the markers... Yeah - in Germany you only keep a grave site as long as somebody pays the fees... So those graves are gone and nobody knows what became of that statue pictured in my entry: Fleeing Hungary
Sigh - it's just like Vesti to make that kind of decision without letting anyone else know...

Now - back to the story:

By the end of November 1968 we were already more than a month behind on the rent on the Mission Beach condo. And, as I've mentioned before, back then you could get into an apartment for just one month's rent (plus security deposit). So it was actually cheaper to move to a new place than to pay the back rent on the Mission Beach condo. And that's exactly what we did.
We found a nice little apartment on Camino Del Sol - right across from the La Jolla Beach & Tennis Club. I'm not sure of the exact address - but if you go to Google street view at 8120 Camino Del Sol and look east you'll see hedge with a gate. That was it. It was probably more than we could afford but - as I've mentioned many times - that was not the kind of thing mom ever worried about :-)

I ended up going to La Jolla High School. Back in 1968 the place was a mess. The buildings were ancient and were about to be condemned. I heard a story that there was a mirror in one of the girls restrooms with a plaque saying that it was paid for by the class of 1919 and dedicated to the class of 1969... The point being that the buildings were really old - the nicest classrooms were the trailers our back... It was all very dark and run down...

Being a creature of habit I continued to follow the patterns I had established at Mission Bay High: Rode the bus to school - didn't eat lunch - and walked home. I really don't remember very else much about it - other than the incident when that girl noticed I was staring up her skirt. I told that tale in one of my first blog entries: Embarrassment So - I've finally come full circle on that :-)
Now - most of the students at Mission Bay High were pretty laid back. But (as near as I could tell) almost everyone at La Jolla High was just plain nasty - lots of teasing and ugly remarks... Yeah - I didn't look and act exactly like they did so obviously I had to be attacked... But to tell the truth it really didn't bother me. I was way beyond caring about anything at that point...
BTW: I quickly discovered that if you acted stoned the other students tended to leave you alone... I was good at pretending to be stoned :-) Of course - I never really went to school stoned... Drunk: yes. Stoned: no :-)

You know - during all those years there was always at least one girl around who seemed to like me and (in retrospect) wasn't bad looking... But at the time I was so obsessed with finding "the perfect girl" that I didn't really pay attention to any of them...
At La Jolla High there was this one girl who had this Bohemian / counter-culture vibe - sort of like Ellen Page in the movie "Juno". I don't remember her name but I do recall that she was sitting right next to me when the "Embarrassment" incident happened. (That's kind of burned into my memory...) I recall that she was turning colors trying not to laugh :-) But that's not the main reason why I remember her:
I was generally depressed in those days and whenever I ran into her she would invariably say something that made me feel better. It was always"on point" - almost as if she could read my mind... It was really quite amazing... It crossed my mind that I'd probably really enjoy hanging out with her... But she didn't fit my image of perfection...

I should probably make it clear that I really have no regrets about never having had a girlfriend in high school. I'm just pointing out what an idiot I was for having such totally unrealistic expectations. If there's one bit of wisdom I'd like to pass along on the topic it's that a relationship that's not based on friendship isn't worth having :-)

Knowledge and Beliefs

By late 1968 mom had been into yoga and meditation for years. Her belief system also included reincarnation, astrology (which she learned as a child in Transylvania), extraterrestrials, vibrations, auras and a bunch of other stuff (including the Catholicism she grew up with)...

She had always made a big deal of how special we were - and that "specialness" evolved with her beliefs... Yes - in addition to being the progeny of generations of highly refined intellectuals and artists - my mom, sister and I (having been reincarnated thousands of times - including some well known historical figures) were now on our "last lives". We were ready to move up to the next plane of existence (whatever that might be) and it was our responsibility - as enlightened souls - to educate the less evolved among us...

I guess I more or less believed it at the time. (As much as I've ever believed anything... Oh - me of little faith...) It just made it harder to figure out why I couldn't handle the trivial things that most people dealt with on a daily basis... I guess I must have been too evolved... Yeah - that must have been it :-)

I know it all sounds a bit silly in retrospect... But it's no sillier than the idea that a bunch of matter got together one day and decided to spontaneously burst into a universe that somehow managed to produce life on (at least) a single planet - all at random, yet still guided by a wondrously balanced set of mathematical principles... Not to mention the alternate explanation that all of this was deliberately created by some higher intelligence for some incomprehensible purpose...
Sigh - I still haven't come across an explanation for our existence that makes a lick of sense... If only we didn't exist then all of these "explanations" would be mere hypotheses and we could all have a good laugh over how stupid they sound... But noo - we had to go and exist ... Silly us :-)

I know I'm going a bit deep here... I just want to point out that knowledge is a moving target... You can have an awful lot of it and still not understand a darn thing... And that's totally OK - just as long as you don't fool yourself into thinking knowledge and understanding are the same thing :-) But I totally digress...

I spent those months on Mission Beach friendless, clueless and confused - despondent over a relationship that never was - with a girl I never knew... At some point I stopped caring about very much of anything...

On school days I'd stay in bed after the alarm went off - and if I was still awake 15 minutes later I'd get up and go to school... Otherwise mom would just write a note saying I was sick...

Sometimes I would sneak out late at night and dive into the ocean - fully clothed - swim out past the breakers - and just float there - letting the tide have its way with me... It was awesome :-) ... I always drifted back toward shore (eventually). I'm not really sure what I would have done if I hadn't. (I never peeked to see which way I was headed - that would have defeated the whole purpose...) But I guess (in retrospect) I'm glad I didn't have to find out :-)

I still had my Vox electric guitar - but without an amp playing wasn't very satisfying... Still - that was around the time when "Classical Gas" was getting a lot of air time. That inspired me to expand my musical horizons: In addition to Clapton and Hendrix I started playing stuff like Classical Gas - and Malaguena - Girl From Ipanema - a bit of Bach - even some Beatles ballads ("If I fell", "Yesterday", "Michelle") ... Pretty much anything that could be worked out solo on a guitar... That was about the only thing that kept me sane :-)

And I can't close the book on Mission Beach with mentioning the Jefferson Airplane "Surrealistic Pillow" album... A couple of the songs ("Today" and "Coming Back to Me") meshed exquisitely with my mood. For example: "The summer had inhaled and held its breath too long. The winter looked the same, as if it never had gone." That's some excellent music to be depressed to... I swear - Airplane never really got the credit they deserved. The oldie's stations don't play anything but "White Rabbit"... That was far from their best material...

So yeah - leave it to me to not have a good time in paradise... Somehow I just didn't belong there... I didn't think like they did - I didn't act like they did - I simply wasn't one of them... But it was only for a few months... Then it got worse :-)

People, places and things

In an earlier blog post I mentioned that my sister Karina (who was 18 at the time) was having a relationship with the son of our landlord... Well - him and a few other guys... That was back when she was doing whatever she felt like doing - luckily, that phase only lasted 15 years or so :-)

John (that was his name) was also 18 and his family was quite well off... He once took me and Karina up to their house in the hills above La Jolla in his Dad's new Mercedes - but when we got there we had to hang out in the kitchen - his parent's were not OK with us being there... We weren't the right sort of people...
I do recall that their kitchen was bigger than a lot of people's apartments - the walls and floors were fully tiled and all the appliances were commercial stainless steel units. I also recall that he made me a milkshake using a built-in commercial milkshake machine - I had never seen one in a residential kitchen before...

But the interesting part of the story is that John broke up with Karina over a car...
When we first moved to Mission Beach he had a beautiful blue 1967 Chevelle SS 396 convertible - but he wasn't satisfied with it. What he really wanted was a Porsche 911T (that was the latest model at the time)... One day he showed up with a pile of brochures and spent hours gushing over all the technology and features... Then he announced that his parents were flying him to Stuttgart to pick up a brand new burgundy 911T at the Porsche factory - he was going to drive it around Europe for a month and have it shipped back to San Diego. There was just one catch: He had promised not to ever see Karina again. But he assured her he had no intention of keeping that promise - they just had to be really careful so his parents didn't find out...
Karina pretty much flipped out. She let him know in no uncertain terms that if he got the Porsche she would never see him again... So - he got the Porsche :-)

Next topic:
San Diego is one of those places that's close to everything. It's on the beach but still close to the mountains and desert. There's no end of places to go and things to do - and we did a lot of exploring in the Mustang convertible in those first few months. There were trips to Mt. Palomar and to Joshua Tree, Lake Elsinore and Oceanside... And Ramona...
BTW: Mom had this thing about the name Ramona - It was because of the 1936 movie with Loretta Young - it was one of her favorites... This one time when I was 3 years old I was watching Captain Kangaroo and mom came in and changed the channel because Ramona was on... Now - I figured if I couldn't watch what I wanted then she shouldn't be able to either - so I stood in front of the TV... And she spanked me... I didn't think that was very fair - being a kid sucks :-) But I digress...

Riding with mom was interesting (as always). She went really slow on winding roads but refused to pull over to let the long line of cars behind her pass... Karina and I were always afraid that somebody was going to get impatient, pass at the wrong time and have a head-on collision right next to us. When we expressed our concerns mom always said (in her Hungarian accent) "Vell... It vould be dere own fault!!"... Yeah - but does it really matter if we end up getting killed too??

Aside #1: Anyone who has ridden with me can attest that I get irrational about drivers whose speed varies, who drive below the speed limit, who drift from side to side, who go slow and won't pull over, who don't notice their lane is ending - all those things my mom used to do... It's a consequence of having spent my childhood in mortal fear :-)

Aside #2: History had forgotten how freaking unreliable those 65 Mustangs were when they first came out. Ours had less than that 40,000 miles on it. It overheated on long hills - the transmission used to get stuck in low gear when cold - the water pump failed - the timing chain failed (nylon teeth) - it was hard to start when cold (I had to fiddle with the choke while mom cranked it). And there was the infernal squeaking. You always knew when there was a Ford nearby because the cheap suspension bushings squeaked incessantly... Yeah - Ford saved a few bucks on every car... But I digress again :-)

There were loads of pomegranate orchards in that area - the roadside stands were everywhere... We'd heard of pomegranates before but had never seen one - and in retrospect I don't know why people bother with them. They're really hard to eat and they stain the h*ll out of everything they touch... And frankly - they're not that good... I suppose I'll get a nasty-gram from the International Pomegranate Anti-Defamation Association for having said that :-)

And lastly: I guess there's no better time to tell the story about the 20-something redheaded school teacher who lived in our condo building. It's really not that great of a story... Just one of the many things I've never forgotten:

One day I was on the beach and I noticed that the school teacher was out on the veranda in front of our condo building (in a very skimpy light blue flower-pattern bikini) showing the neighbors some antique thing she had bought... After a while the neighbors left so I figured that would be a good time to head over for a better look... I'll leave it as an exercise for you - the reader - to determine exactly what I wanted a better look at :-)
Now - you're probably wondering how I was able to approach her so easily given my panic disorder and the shyness and all... It's simple. I knew there was no way she would ever be interested in me - so there was absolutely nothing at stake.
Anyway - she saw me approaching and immediately invited me over. Being so shy I stopped a few feet away from her and (much to my surprise) she sidled up right next to me - we were literally touching... She was holding her new antique jewelry box (shaped like a miniature treasure chest) right in front of her cleavage (which was highly exposed and impressively ample) and proceeded to point out all the intricate little details and hidden compartments and such - and to be perfectly honest, I'm not sure I ever looked directly at the jewelry box...

Finally - she gave me this little grin and said "So ... Do you like my chest???"

I was like - WTF??? In retrospect it's obvious that the double entendre was intentional. (She was quite a flirtatious little thing.) But being so young and naive I was pretty much stunned - confused - and speechless. I spent weeks afterward trying to decide if that was what she really meant - and wondering what I should have said (also obvious in retrospect). Yeah - it drove me nuts...

But, regardless of her intent, she did provide me with one heck of a memorable experience :-)