Myers / Fulton Page 190
JP Myers Word Count
736 Windwood Dr 50,000
Walnut, CA 91789
909-568-8629
fultonavenue@gmail.com
FULTON AVENUE
GROWING UP IN
THE SAN FERNANDO VALLEY
IN THE 1970'S
by JP Myers
1
From Vegas to Minnesota
Johnny Myers, my Dad, was very close friends with Jimmy Smight, my Moms brother. This was before my Mom and Dad actually met. Jimmy loved Jazz, which is an understatement, he lived for Jazz and big band music. He would send my Mom letters in later years, and would write “Woody Herman for President” on the envelope. Woody was his all time favorite. Jimmy would go and watch my Dad play all the time. He loved the way my Dad played Drums. My Dad had mastered the art of brushes, a very smooth and classy approach. My Dad played all the seedy strip clubs and jazz clubs in downtown Minneapolis in the 50's and early 60's. I'm not sure of the club my Dad was playing at at the time, it may have been the Saddle Bar in downtown, he talked about that a lot. Jimmy brought my Mom, Mary Ann or Mare as they called her for short, to see Johnny Myers play drums in a trio he was in. My Mom loved live music. She grew up listening to Frank Sinatra and big band music. She saw my Dad playing drums and fell in love with him right away, and the rest is history. They got married on January 19th 1960. Just a couple months after they met, my grandmother died, Harriet Myers, and my grandfather Harold Smight died. Maybe that's why they wanted to leave town, to try to leave the painful memories behind them.
They packed up and moved to Las Vegas shortly thereafter. My Dad was looking to leave the strip bars of downtown Minneapolis and see what he could make happen in Vegas. My Mom always thought it was incredible that he could make a living playing drums. In no time at all they had two kids, Pat and Mike. Two years a part. I was born John Patrick or JP for short in January of 1963 in Las Vegas at Sunrise Hospital and Michael Harold in December of 1964 back in Minneapolis. When I was born my Mom's oldest brother, Jack and his wife Joyce sent a stuffed animal, a dog named Morgan, to the hospital with a congratulatory telegram. I still have Morgan, you squeeze his nose and he barks.
My Dad told me that he was not allowed in the birthing room when I was born. These were the days when the father paced the waiting room, waiting for the doctor to appear. When they took my Mom to her room my Dad was outside smoking and looking though the window. He saw my Mom holding me, feeding me with a bottle. I was never breast fed. Mom didn't know how to hold me, fumbling with the blanket very unskillfully. My Dad was laughing because she was clueless as how to do this mother thing. Parenting was really a new thing and would prove to be quite a challenge for both my parents. I think Mom might have had second thoughts after she had us kids, seeing how hard it would be and that her life style would be pretty much shut down.
My parents lived in a tiny one story cinder block apartment on New York Avenue in Las Vegas, right behind where the Stratosphere Hotel is today. The apartment was at the end of a street where you would have to either turn left or right or end up in my parents driveway. One story my Mom used to tell was one night a car came barreling down the street and didn't stop and plowed into my parents car that was parked in the driveway. The guy was drunk. If my Mom was here right now she would still remember the guys name. She used to grit her teeth and shake her head when she said his name, followed by “asshole”. The guy had no insurance of course.
When I was ten months old President Kennedy was killed in Dallas. I have a flash of memory about that time. I remember my Mom being glued to the TV. I remember seeing my Mom crying and very upset. It went on for a couple days until the funeral procession to Arlington Cemetery. My Mom stared and stared at that black and white TV as little John John followed the casket. I knew something was wrong and that Mom was very sad. My family on both sides were devoted Democrats and Mom loved Jack Kennedy.
Both my parents were major party animals. They both smoked like chimneys, and drank like fish, including when she was pregnant with me. This was before all the health warnings or maybe my Mom just did it with out taking the consequences into account. I'm not sure about that. She never expressed any guilt about it. Mary Ann got a job as telephone operator on the Vegas strip at a hotel and Johnny got a gig playing drums in a lounge act at one of the casinos. Johnny and Mary Ann would go out late at night during the week even though she was pregnant with me at the time. After many glasses of wine and my Dad taking a couple bennies (amphetamines) to stay awake. Just like most of the guys in the band he was playing with. I'm sure my Mom was taking them as well, who knows. I can't imagine her staying up all night without them. My Dad would go to work earlier in the evening, playing drums in some lounge act. After he was done for the night at around 2am my Mom would come by and they would head for the Riviera Hotel Casino, with their sunglasses in their pockets. They would need the sunglasses because the sun would be up when they walked out of the casino at around 6am to go home. Pregnant with me, Johnny and Mary Ann would sit at the bar, night after night, and happily be insulted by the master himself, Don Rickles. Don would see them come in and sit down and he would go after them right way. He would say “Look who's back everybody, it's the woman in heat and the guy with the Robert Hall suit and the pinky ring, welcome back, welcome back”, then he'd turn his head with a disgusted look and say “Oh Boy”. You could hear my Mom laughing the down the street, she was a little woman, about 5 foot tall, but boy could she laugh. My parents had that in common. They loved to laugh. It's one of the greatest gifts they gave my brother and I.
Smoking and drinking up a storm, they loved the night life. My Mom always said she was a night owl. My Dad played in the band backing comedian Red Foxx for a while. He almost got some recording studio gigs in town but could not read music, which was a requirement. After trying to learn over a few months time he pretty much gave it up. It was something you couldn't possibly learn quickly. He was a great drummer by ear and could play great but those jobs required precise notes to be played. Something my Dad only felt in his gut.
After a few of years in Las Vegas with nothing really spectacular happening they moved back to Minneapolis. Their life had changed dramatically after I was born. The fun that they were having came to screeching halt. I'm not sure what they were attempting to do in Las Vegas but it was unsatisfying and a hard living with not much money.
On returning to Minneapolis Johnny and Mary Ann moved in with Millie Smight, my Mom's step mother. Millie was living alone after being widowed in April of 1960. Harold Smight, Mary Ann's father died from injuries in a car accident.
After a short amount of time at Millie's my parents moved into a Queens Avenue four-plex, next to Lake Harriet. My Mom was pregnant again with my brother Mike. He was born on December 8th 1964. Then a year or so later they moved into a house on 51st and Penn Avenue. The Penn Avenue house was just blocks from Lake Harriet, and a few miles southwest of downtown Minneapolis. I remember riding my tricycle with my Mom along Lake Harriet as she pushed a baby carriage with Mike in it. I remember all the trees along the lake shore. The roots would stick out into the lake but were covered with dirt. A hilly path was formed where people would walk or ride their bikes. On that path as I rode I would go up and down these little hills between the roots. I remember it being so fun. We would also ice skate on this lake in the winter. My Dad would jog around the entire 2 ｽ miles of the lake in the warmer months.
Johnny and Mary Ann would purchase the Penn Avenue house. The only house they ever owned, or were trying to own.
The Penn Avenue house was a two story 4 bedroom house with a basement. I would ride my tricycle round and round in the basement for hours during the winter time. It had an enclosed patio and a nice yard. Their was an unattached garage that looked like a little barn, with big windows on these giant swinging doors, and had rafters where a lot of stuff was stored like snow sleds and lawn furniture and boards of wood. The house was on a corner lot of a fairly busy two lane street. It also had a concrete paved alley between the houses. My cousin Tim used to show me how you could see pictures and faces and animal shapes in the clouds as we laid on the concrete driveway in back of his grandparents house, the Cunnings. Or we would watch the contrails from high flying jets going by. Two doors down from the Penn Avenue house was where Walt and Claire Cunning lived. Jack's wife Joyce Cunning and her parents had helped Johnny and Mary Ann to find this house on the corner of Penn Avenue.
My Mom adored these people. Walt and Claire Cunning were a class act and loved my Mom to death. They were an older couple, probably in their late 50's. Claire was always dressed perfectly with just the right skirt, hair in a bun, makeup and jewelry. She kind of reminded me of a school teacher. Often Mom would be at their house playing Bridge with Claire, and she would also teach my Mom how to entertain and have dinner parties. She would show her table settings and how to arrange the living room furniture so it didn't always point to or focus on the television. Claire thought it was better for the conversation. And their was no clock in the living room to distract the guests. Conversation was the important thing. Claire was the originator of the famous “Cunning Dip” with Dill Weed of course. Which I talk about more later. Walt Cunning was also a very sharp dresser, standing over 6'4”. A very hands on guy with a workshop in his basement, he love to antique things. I still have to this day an old Milk can that was painted green and made to look old. As I was growing up I heard about Walt and Claire all the time. My Mom was influenced greatly by these people. I wish I could have known them better. After we left for California I don't think she ever saw them again.
Often my parents would go out on the town and my cousin Cathy would babysit us. She was always fun. She was just a teenager. I so vividly remember her making popcorn. The memory of that smell is so clear to me in the Penn House Kitchen.
I remember the power going out one night when I was upstairs in my room. I was so scared, I ran to the stairs to go to Mom and lost my footing and fell all the way down those very steep stairs crying and screaming of course. It could be an old scary house for a little kid. And being upstairs alone in the dark really scared me.
My room on the second floor was next to Mom and Dad's and had a twin bed in it. Painted red. It had these big metal rails for a headboard and foot board. It was kind of like an old hospital bed, it may have been. I had to put a chair next to the bed so I could get onto it. It was a little too tall for a little kid like me. Also the chair was there so I would not fall out of bed on to the hard wood floor, which did happen often while I was sleeping. Many mornings my Mom would discover me on the floor wrapped in a blanket. I also had a dresser that had a two door cabinet on the bottom, my Mom found me asleep in there more than once after I had a bad dream. My room had a south facing dormer window, so I could see the yard and the houses across the street on Penn Avenue. It had a lot of sunlight always coming in to the room. My brothers crib was just across the hall from my mine in an unfinished room. And down the hall next to the stairs was Mom and Dad's room. They were still working on painting and putting up wallpaper in Mike's room. I heard a story many times about how they were taking off wallpaper when redoing the living room walls. They spent days and days peeling off layer after layer of wallpaper. It was a old house and they were just finding out how old. Then hanging the new paper would come to be a nightmare never having done it before. Lining it up correctly and pasting it on the wall, it was very aggravating and maddening as my Mom used to describe it to me. Like an old I love Lucy bit.
Johnny Myers and Jimmy Smight would go out and see live music and get drunk without Mary Ann. They came home one night and just sat in the car in the driveway. Laughing till all hours of the night, drinking and smoking dope and listening to Jazz really loud on the radio. My Mom came out to see what they were doing why they weren't coming in the house. She was a little disgusted because she was inside all night taking care of us kids. She walked out to the car, then she looked at my Dad and yelled at him “if you love him so much why don't you marry him?” then stormed back into the house and slammed the door.
My memories at this age are like flashes. I remember getting stung by a bee in the yard, I've been scared of bees ever since. I remember an old man wearing a black suit walking on the sidewalk with wing tip shoes, hearing the gravel under his leather soles, and the way he shuffled his feet made a sound I'll never forget. Like the sound of grinding little stones followed by the sole brushing the concrete. And the weird stare he gave me, and then a smile.
I remember my Mom dressing my brother and I to go out to play in the snow. Putting on all this clothing, snow pants and jackets and gloves and hats for two kids. Then one of us would look up into Moms eyes and say “I gotta pee”.
Double Rim Shot, Cymbal!
2
Fulton Avenue
On a hot August night in 1967, in a neighborhood called Fulton in Minneapolis, my Dad closed the doors on a U-Haul truck containing all of our belongings from the Penn house. The following morning our family would be driving cross country to live in Los Angeles. The truck was completely filled, the furniture was pushed right up to the back of the door as he closed the door and drew down the latch.
This would be our last night in the only house my parents ever owned. Early in the morning my brother and I, probably still asleep on the floor, were put in a beat up VW Bug. My Mom would drive the VW following my Dad driving the U-Haul truck, as he pushed hard for California. The VW was stocked with snacks and toys and blankets. Unfortunately there was no toilet which would be the main problem driving across the country with two toddlers.
After driving for three days my parents would arrive to look
for an apartment. On the road the only thing for a 5 year old and a 3 year old to do is repeat the same line for over and over, “are we there yet?”. My Mom and Dads standard answer was “it's just over the next hill”. The other line was, “I gotta go pee Mom!” My Mom and Dad wanted to get out of Minnesota after spending their whole lives there. My Dad told me they wanted to get the hell out of those very cold Minnesota winters. They hated the cold weather, they were sick of shoveling snow. My Mom's brother Jack lived in Los Angeles, so that was another good reason to go.
A lot of our toys including my wagon, a snow sled and my trike had to be left behind because their was no room in the truck. They didn't tell Mike and I of course.
On the road when we stopped to get gas or pee my brother and I would change to riding in the truck or go back to the bug with Mom. I remember my brother sleeping all bundled up on the floor of the truck. A very bouncy and loud ride it was but it never woke him up. The vibrations probably lulled him to sleep.
This drive was very tough on my Mom with us two kids driving her nuts. And my Dad was pushing so hard to get to California, as fast as he could. My Mom could barely keep up in that slow stick shift VW. My Mom told me once that during this trip she started to cry because she was so tired and had driven so much and the stress of taking care of two rowdy kids.
We stayed at one motel on the way. I don't remember much about the actual trip being only 5 years old at the time, Mike was 3. I do remember it being an eternity before we were “there”.
We arrived about three days later in Van Nuys, California. We pulled into this pretty cheesy motel on Supulveda Boulevard. Supulveda Boulevard in the 1970's was almost as it is today. Worn out, dirty, trash in the streets. Not a great part of town. The street was a very wide boulevard. The red car line trolley used to occupy the center of the road many years ago. And now sex newspapers were on the street corners, the homeless were roaming and hookers loitering. I remember looking at one of those sex newspapers through the dirty cracked plastic window in a newspaper stand that was painted a bright green and was padlocked to a pole on the dirty sidewalk. It showed a woman all sweaty with her head tilted back and said something in big block letters that I was too young to read. I pointed to it and asked my Mom what it was and she didn't answer me. There were lots of gang types walking around near the motel so my Mom shooed us into the hot room. Little did Mom and Dad know that the town they had just brought us to was the same area that Charles Manson was in. About 10 miles away Charlie Manson was living in Chatsworth. And the San Fernando Valley was to become the Porn Capital of the world. What a change for us to come to the hot valley from Minneapolis.
My Dad had contacted the Los Angeles chamber of commerce before we left by mail to find out where there was a good place to live and other things about this city. The San Fernando Valley was the choice they made. And after my Mom talked to her brother who lived in Brentwood, Jack said this area was a good place to live. Not knowing what Brentwood was we soon found out why Jack didn't live in the Valley. He was in show business, a movie director, and had money so he lived in a ritzy neighborhood. In Brentwood the houses are never called Hotboxes. Jack's house was fairly close to the cool breezes of the beach. The Valley had some very hot weather in the summertime and our apartment didn't have air conditioning.
The San Fernando Valley is a vast place. It about 25 miles long by 15 miles wide. Solid Buildings, houses, shopping centers, concrete and asphalt from end to end. Only a few areas where corn is grown and some great parks and some hiking in the mountains that border the valley. It's very lush with all types of trees, lots of Palm trees and Pine trees sometimes right next to each other. Mostly small residential streets with some wide boulevards like Ventura Boulevard. Now days there are a lot of freeways and a whole lot of cars. But for the most part I think it would be called a large residential area with a ton of strip malls and grocery stores.
Mom and Dad found an apartment a few miles east of the cheesy motel in a much nicer area. My Dad said we got lucky. It was a small two bedroom apartment in Sherman Oaks. Just two houses down from the intersection of Fulton and Magnolia, 5141 Fulton Avenue to be exact.
It was in a small triplex apartment building set back from the street. Two units together (upstairs and downstairs) and one larger one story unit connected to it, sort of an L-shaped building. We rented the unit downstairs, right below Tilly Bower, the owners mother. Rosalie Friedman, the owner lived with her two kids, Jon and Mark in the larger unit. This triplex was the only one of it's kind in this neighborhood, it was mostly houses in this area. It had a nice front lawn with a large birch tree. Some short little bushes of unknown origin underneath the units windows. A little concrete path from the sidewalk to the apartments that went around back to the laundry room and the three garages which were accessed via a dirt alley. The alley was fun when it rained, a total mess usually. Their was a huge eucalyptus tree behind the building where the clothes lines were. The path continued around the back of the building and met up with the sidewalk in front.
It was a nice neighborhood to grow up in. Manicured lawns and nice landscaping. Nothing fancy but nice. Fulton Avenue was a small two lane street with a sidewalk only on our side of the street. The apartment faced the eastern sky. We had trees changing color in the fall and leaves in the street and in the yards.
This was a show business neighborhood. Lots of actors, writers, and movie people. Lots of transplants from other places. A big Jewish population from the east coast. It was rumored that Walt Disney used to live across the street on the corner of Fulton and Magnolia, this turned out not to be true. The Ed Goddard family lived a few houses down, Ed was an actor.
The owner of the apartment, Rosalie Friedman and her mother Tilly Bower were (as my mom would say “very Jewish”, but not in a bad way). Tilly Bower would come down and give my Mom food like Ox Tail soup, a Jewish dish. It was an education for us. Tilly Bower was in her 70's and could barely get up those stairs to her apartment above us. She drove a very old station wagon. It was white with the fake wood trim. She would leave in the morning and go to a chicken farm some place and take a whole car load of eggs to the Farmers Market on Fairfax near CBS, south of Hollywood. She had lots of friends from this area which had and still has a large Jewish population. I think this may have been her old neighborhood before they moved to Sherman Oaks. She would sit there and sell these eggs all day then come home and cook something that she bought at the farmers market that smelled very good, just about everyday. It was always some Jewish dish that we never heard of.
She would pull up in her car late in the afternoon. It was hilarious to watch her park this car of hers. We would run out to watch her, because we knew what to expect. She tried to parallel park this long car in front of the apartment. She would put it in reverse and start to back in....she goes.... and goes... then bam! Hits the car behind her. Then she'd pull forward.... then forward... then bam! Hits the car in front of her. God help you if you were parked anywhere near her! This was an everyday event. She gets out of her car all cheery and says hi to everyone on the street like nothing happened. She would pull out all her bags and her cane. She always wore this huge white print dress to cover her weight, she was a large woman. Then the slow trek to the apartment and up the stairs with her cane. I don't know what her daughter was thinking having her walk up those stairs at her age.
So anyway, Rosalie Friedman the owner gives my parents the key to the apartment after they sign the lease. Dad pulls the U-haul truck up and we unloaded the entire contents of the truck onto the front lawn very quickly. Dad had to get that truck back to the U-haul place. The dining room was just big enough for the large Early American hardwood harvest dining table, with it's huge solid wood captains chairs and 4 ladder back chairs with rush seats. All my parents furniture was Early American. There were two small love seats (couches) with that old turn of the century newspaper ad fabric print. A wing backed living room chair, a old milk can, antiqued by Walt Cunning. A large replica of a revolutionary drum, that was a table. An American eagle lamp. A beautiful hardwood hutch for plates, glasses and china. A dry sink cabinet that the stereo and record player was put into. And two large wool mutli-colored oval rugs for the living room and entryway. Mom also had other trinkets on the walls like a cast iron blue tip match holder that you could use to strike the match. A huge oriental tapestry that went in the hallway. An old whiskey barrel that was a nightstand for the bedroom. Old painted pictures of farm houses in these large elaborate frames. One of these had little slits cut in the frame to hang tiny silver baby spoons. I never understood what that was about. She also had a large very dark painting of a mother and her two kids at a table eating, with a fireplace in the background. It was all out of proportion. This mother was sitting in like a kiddie chair. If she stood up she would have hit the ceiling. I always thought that was the most bizarre painting. The apartment was filled with stuff that Walt Cunning have given her. I can't even remember all of it.
The kitchen was very small. It had an old refrigerator, one of those with the huge rounded door, it looked like it was from the 50's. It could barely keep ice cream cold, maybe that's why we never had any. Next to it was a great old O'Keefe and Merrit gas stove. Their were yellow and white tile counters and two large ceramic sinks. Above the sink was a window looking out at the concrete sidewalk and a cinder block wall of the neighbors property. I think the floor was a reddish linoleum tile. On the ceiling was a simple light fixture with one bulb. At the end of this very small kitchen was a door that led out to the garages and the laundry room. And right in the middle of the kitchen was a flimsy pine table where Mike and I ate.
The kitchen towel that Mom always used was a calendar. She got a basket of stuff at the office during the holidays and in it was a calendar made of cloth with a dowel on each end. She would hang this on the kitchen wall. When she got the new calendar the following year she would take the old one down and use it for a kitchen towel. Mom had a large wood bread box on the counter next to the sink. It had a large door you would pull open to get the bread inside. You could literally put 5 loafs of bread in there. It said on the door in cursive writing “the staff of life”. As little kids Mike and I would take out all the can goods from the cupboards and play store. I used to take the kitchen cleaners out from under the sink and mix them together in a pan. I'm very lucky nothing bad happened to me. Over the years the kitchen became the place where everyone would hang out. My Mom's friends would sit in there as she cooked and they would drink wine and smoke cigarettes and laugh up a storm.
The phone was always on the old Spinet Desk in Mom's room. Before push button phones we had this ancient very heavy old solid metal black rotary phone. When the phone rang it was a race down the hall between my brother and I to answer it. One of us would pick up the receiver and say “hello?” and it was always “is your Mom there?” Then we would yell “Mom!....Phone!” As very young kids Mike and I both had that phone number memorized, 213-788-6827. It was printed on a small white circle of paper that was under the plastic dial placed there by the phone company man.
To keep us kids from screwing around with the phone including making crank calls she would say “don't touch the phone, every time you pick up that phone it costs money, so knock it off”. Of course this was not exactly true. But it kind of worked because she was so adamant about it. Down right nasty. Mike and I would still race to answer it.
Mike and I shared a room together. Two Twin beds with a line straight down the middle, my side of the room and Mikes side. And of course it was always a mess.
My Mom would not sleep till we were all moved in that night. It went late into the night. After many configurations of couches and tables and beds, she finally decided on how she liked it. We finally went to bed, our first real night in California. We would never be the same.
Double Rim Shot, Cymbal!
3
Mom and Dad and Family
My Mom Mary Ann Myers was born Mary Ann Cecilia Smight August 21st, 1935 in Minneapolis. She was a very small child. She grew up to be only 5' tall. In her high school portrait she was very beautiful with dark olive skin, long black hair down to her waist. She had a very thin athletic figure, a wide smile and a very prominent nose, which would be known as the “Smight” nose. Kind of like a bulbous arrow pointing down. I also would enjoy the Smight genes with my own large “Smight” nose. Mary Ann was from an Irish family, my Mom would say she was black Irish or that jokingly she had a 5th of Scotch. Alexander Smight my great grandfather was a Minneapolis Fireman. He drove an engine for 7 years before dying in 1937. On his death certificate it says “mothers maiden name “Smith” place of birth, “Scotland”. So I guess we were Irish and Scottish. Their must have been so many Smiths that he or someone at Ellis Island changed it to Smight.
Mary Ann's mother Beatrice or Bea as she was known died of TB in 1946 when Mary Ann was only 11 years old. Bea was only 46 years old. This was very hard on Mary Ann. It was the first in a long series of deaths she would experience throughout her life. Harold Smight her father was in the Coast Guard. He loved the water as my Mom would say. After he got out of the service he started a Livery business in Minneapolis, limousines and hearses. He was very successful at it. He had a fleet of 10 to 20 cars that he would rent with a driver, for funerals, graduations and weddings. Harold Smight loved boating and owned a beautiful ChrisCraft wood hulled speed boat. He also bought a house on Lake Minnetonka that had a dock for the boat. The Smight's would live there in the summer and trailer the boat back to their other house in the city at 3841 12th Ave South and live there in winter. After the death of Bea, the Smight family was Harold Smight, Jack, Jimmy, Mary Ann, and Jerry. Jack was the oldest, Jimmy and Mary Ann were a couple years apart and Jerry was the youngest. Jack went to the Pacific in World War II when the other kids were in their early teens. He was a navigator in the Air Force. He never would talk about it, I think he had some bad experiences. About a year before he died in 2004 he told me that he saw the devastation from one of the atomic bombs dropped on Japan and thought it a horrible thing. He was a staunch Liberal Democrat and had some very strong opinions. He bucked heads with his Dad Harold. When Jack was a little baby his mom would put him in beauty contests, which he did quite well. My Mom told me a story about how Harold would get jealous because of the time that Bea spent with Jack. Almost to the detriment of their relationship. Bea had a unhealthy and inappropriate relationship with Jack when he was a kid. Whatever that really means I do not know, but this is what my Mom would say when talking about that time. He was fawned over like a doll.
After Bea died Mary Ann took care of her brothers and father by cooking and cleaning the house. The brothers would always be giving her a hard time being the only girl in the family. Mary Ann attended catholic school throughout her young years and into high school. She rejected the Catholic religion or lost her faith after her father died. At age 17 on her birthday Mary Ann was given a sailboat from her Dad. It was named “Mary Ann I”. She had the boating bug just like her Dad. On some mornings at the lake house before Harold would go off to work he would look at Mary Ann and say “want to buzz the area?” This meant a short and fast trip around the lake in the ChrisCraft. Mary Ann went on to work for Prudential Insurance where she met her first husband to be, Dick Ryan. Her brothers Jimmy and Jerry started an ambulance company with the help of Harold Smight called James Ambulance. Jimmy and Jerry were both big partiers, and live music lovers. Lots of smoking, and an alcohol fueled lifestyle was the mainstay for all the Smights. Jack was also into music, Jazz that is. In his 20's after the war he was in a band with Peter Graves, the actor from Mission Impossible. He would come over to the house to rehearse. Peter played piano. Peter would pick up Mary Ann and swing her around the room just kidding around. At Jack Smight's Wake after he died in 2004, Peter Graves picked up Mary Ann one last time after not seeing her for 20 years or more and swung her around the room whoopee!
Her father Harold Smight was one huge person in my Mom's life. A week wouldn't go by when I was growing up where she would not mention his name or the boat rides around Lake Minnetonka. I never met my grandfather. I feel like I know him.
Jack Smight took theater at the University of Minnesota and met his future wife Joyce. They got married and moved to New York. Jack got into TV production and directed some live TV at CBS like “The Sound of Jazz” with Billie Holiday. He also directed some daytime serials like “One Mans Family” and the “Goodyear Television Playhouse” and “Alcoa Theater”, where he directed “Eddie” with Micky Rooney in 1959 and won an Emmy. Then Jack and Joyce moved Los Angeles and Jack became a film and TV director with such credits as Midway, and Twilight Zone, Columbo, Alfred Hitchcock presents. Jack died in 2004 of Cancer. He was 78.
Jimmy Smight continued to drive ambulance into the 1970's and then became ill with mouth cancer. He was an unfiltered cigarette smoker. He died in the early 1980's.
Jerry Smight drove ambulance, became an alcoholic and died at the age of 33, in 1970. My Mom told Mike and I that he had gotten into a accident driving the ambulance and died. I only learned the real story about Jerry in the late 1990's from my Dad. She was trying to spare us young kids from the horrible truth by actually telling us the story of what happened to her Dad in 1960. Jerry did make a visit to LA. I only remember him from that visit. He was a fun uncle. Jerry and Jimmy share a grave together at the Resurrection Cemetery in Minneapolis, the same cemetery where Harold and Bea Smight reside.
My Dad's parents were also from Minneapolis. Bert and Harriet Myers. Harriet was a matronly woman. A sweet and kindly mother type and homemaker. Bert was small in stature, short, with a fiery personality. My Dad has always been amazed how much my brother Mike resembles him in looks and personality. Bert was a drunk. It was all Harriet could do to just keep their life in one piece. He was always getting in trouble. He never learned to drive a car thankfully, they never owned a car. My Dad, John Paul Myers was born June 29th, 1930 in Minneapolis. Red haired and freckled as a kid. John or Jacky as he was called then was a wild kid, took after his Dad. Always chasing girls and getting in trouble. He hung out with the not so nice kids and got a street education early. He had two brothers, Bud who was older and Tommy who was younger. John, in his teens wanted to play drums. He joined the Marine Corp at age 17 and so did Tommy. He played the snare drum in the United States Marine Corp Marching Band. John was in a very rainy Rose Parade one year in the 50's. He never left the US while in the Marines. He was also a drill Sargent for a while stationed at camp Pendleton in California. After he got out he pursued his musical career touring with bands all across the country. He played drums professionally for 35 years. He's now retired and returned to his boyhood home of Minneapolis in 2006 after 38 years.
Double Rim Shot Cymbal!
4
The Neighborhood and Kids
The neighborhood, in and around Fulton Avenue was middle to upper class. Very nice houses and yards. Rosalie Friedman, the owner of our building had two kids, Mark and Jon Friedman. Mark was the oldest and Jon was about 2 years younger. Mike and I would make friends with them. Mark was older so he really didn't want to hang out with younger kids. Jon Friedman was around my age and was kind of a prick. He would reluctantly let us hang around him. He liked to be in charge. My Mom used to say “he really thinks he's a big wheel”. He would let us come in his house and play with some of his expensive toys and things when he felt like it. He was rather rotund and a bit of a bully. The Friedman family had a dog named Prince. He was a Shelty breed. This dumb dog would bark every time you walked by their screen door. No matter how long he knew you he still barked. If someone walked by on the sidewalk he'd bark so it was pretty much an all day thing if they left the door open, he'd stand at that screen door feverishly panting between barks. He was one of these yippy dogs, a real big pain in the ass. This went on for years.
Next door was an elderly couple, I can't recall there name. They had a niece named Sherry that babysat Mike and I a few times. I remember she brought a sandwich over with her one night when she was watching us. She said here try this, take a bite. It looked just like Braunsweiger or a liverwurst sandwich. We used to eat that all the time and I loved it. So I took a bite and Sherry got this big smile on her face. She said “it's a tongue sandwich”. I was horrified. A quick introduction into Jewish food thank you very much. I have since not imbibed on the tongue sandwich, I don't like to eat something that is tasting me back.
Down the street about 3 doors was the Goddard family. I only really remember Ed the father and Kimmy the youngest daughter. There were several other members but I don't recall them. Ed Goddard was an actor and writer for TV and movies. I recall he had a few heart attacks. Kimmy Goddard was about Mikes age and was doing some commercials. She had that little freckled and skinny knock kneed look with the double pony tails down her back. Kimmy did a well known commercial for Kool Aid and some Mattel toy commercials. She was a sweet girl and we would play with her and roller skate around and other kid stuff. I remember going inside their house and walking into a very dark back den area. The TV was on. Everything on the screen had this green cast to it. It was like someone had played with the color controls on the back of the TV. Color TV was still pretty new at this time and some people used to like to adjust their sets. I made a comment, “your TV screen is all green, what's the matter with it?” Kimmy said “what are you talking about it looks fine to me”. I thought she was nuts. Maybe they were just used to it that way.
Up the street north of us on Fulton was the Swafford Family. I went to Junior High School with Steven Swafford. Kent Swafford was his dad. He was an actor and appeared on Ellery Queen, Rockford Files, and other stuff. We were good buddies at school and after. He invited me over to his house one day. The house was a wreak. They had lots of kids and dogs and it was a mess. I made a comment, and that was pretty much the end of that friendship. My Mom was a clean freak and drilled that into my head. If you can't keep the place clean then something must be wrong with you, is pretty much what she taught me. A girl that I had a thing for lived across the street from Steven, her name was Porsche Gron. She invited me over one day to make plastic art you paint and put in the oven till shrinks up into a really cheesy key chain or whatever. She was a little pudgy girl with long blond hair, I thought she was beautiful.
There was a handicapped kid that lived on Magnolia around the corner from our apartment. When we would be playing in the back alley he would come out and play with us regularly. He was a nice kid. I think his name was Lee. He had braces on his legs that were attached and hinged in the middle. He would kind of swing his leg for a step and swing his other leg. It looked like he was squatting as he walked. He had the hang of it though, he could almost run with those things on. This would be the first person we ever knew that had a handicap. I never saw him without those braces, I guess at some point they came off. I remember him telling us that he had some problem with his legs that needed to be corrected but they would eventually come off.
One block over on Nagle Street lived a couple of kids named Matt and Amanda Barnett. Mike and I would play with them often. We would go in their back yard and play shower under the clothesline. We would act like we were taking a shower. I remember pulling my pants down and acting like I was taking a shower. Then Amanda would do it. This is the first time I ever saw a naked girls nasty bits. Our parents found out and had a long talk with Mom. I was only maybe 6 years old.
Next door to the Barnett's lived Jeff Heap. A much older kid, he didn't really want much to do with us. In a good mood or something a few times one summer he let us swim in his pool.
Across the street from the Barnetts lived the MacKenzies. David Mackenzie, he was around my age. Mike and I would try to get over to David's often because his Mom would let us have a Popsicle from the freezer almost every time we came over. It was either a Popsicle or a Fudsicle or a Drumstick. This was a huge treat for us, Mom never bought ice cream or popsicles. David used the Popsicles to attract us over and we would hang out in his room playing with a Ouigi board, or go in the back yard. We built a fort in his backyard by digging a hole big enough for a Volkswagen and putting plywood boards on top of it. We'd also have dirt clad fights, which would end as soon as someone got hit a little to hard or somebody got it in the face. David loved to throw them real hard. I think he was kind of an angry kid. I remember he had a record player in his garage that had one 45 record on it, “spinning wheel” by Blood, Sweat and Tears. I remember hearing that song over and over. Every time I hear that song now I think of David and that garage. He also had a animation cell framed on the wall of the cartoon “Tom and Jerry”. I think his parents knew someone that worked on that.
His parents were in their 60's. His father Colin worked for Sony and had some cool equipment including a CB Radio in his office. He had a big executive type desk in this rear den, next to the kitchen. His Dad was a very stern kind of guy, very tall and thin, with white hair. He didn't like us kids hanging around when he was home. We sat there in his office for hours listening to the CB radio. This was at the height of the CB craze in the 70's. When talking on the CB I used the Handle “Machine Gun Kelly” after a local AM music station DJ on 93 KHJ.
David had a strange older brother that didn't live there but used to come over often and just sit on the couch with his hand down his pants. I have no idea what that was about but I knew it was weird. His brother must have been 20 years older than him. The whole family seemed incredibly strange. David's Mom was a bit of a nut. I think her name was Vivian. A little light in the brain department. She had kind of a high pitched voice with white hair, an old lady. I have no idea what these people were doing with a young kid like David. I suspect now thinking back that David was actually their grandson and David's Mom had actually given him to her parents for whatever reason. Maybe David's real Mom had gotten into drugs or got in trouble or something. I don't think David knew the truth about his situation. David went on to steal and get in trouble with police and have problems at school and who knows what else. As we got older he got more and more wild. I went to church a few times with David and his Mom on a Sunday. We went to a church on Coldwater Canyon south of Ventura boulevard. My Mom was really down on the Catholic religion, so I heard a lot of negative stuff and Moms opinion of that. Going to Church with David was just a way to hang out with him. I really wasn't sure why I was going with him, maybe his Mom talked me into it. After being there a few times I really didn't like it. The people seemed scary to me and this particular church had the huge full body Jesus crucifixion statue hanging on the wall of the church and it scared the shit out of me. No one ever told me why this poor man was hanging in pain, bleeding, with nails in his body, it was disturbing. I did attend Sunday school with David a few times but never really got the Christianity 101 that I needed to understand what it was all about. Now, years later I'm a little upset that I never got the message earlier. That it was good stuff and not something to fear. Go figure.
Down the street from David lived Rick Singer. This guy was a piece of work. He was the neighborhood bully. He was always in a bad mood and thought he was a bad ass. I would always try top avoid him while I was riding my bike. I would turn down another street so he wouldn't see me. He once whipped me with a bull whip in the leg. More pain than I had ever felt in my young life. He used to go up on the roof of his house and jump off, a real genius. He actually broke his leg doing this.
In the summer a bunch of kids would come over to the apartment from the neighborhood. Jon and Mark would pull out the Slip and Slide. A very long bright yellow plastic sheet with little holes in it. You'd hook it up to the garden hose and turn on the water. The water would squirt into the air a few feet then on to the plastic sheeting and puddle. You'd run and jump and slide as far as you could go. It was a blast. We had so much fun on this thing. At the end of the day there were injuries, like hitting a sprinkler or stubbing your toe. I was always stubbing my toe. I think when I was a kid I had a stubbed toe at least once a week. Mike and I went barefoot most of the time. The grass under the Slip and Slide was always pretty trashed. I can't believe that the parents let us do this. The front lawn was gone. One big mud puddle. But man was it fun on a hot summer day. We would be exhausted from all the running.
One summer the whole Friedman family, including the parents, Mike and I and other kids from the neighborhood had a giant water balloon fight. We had two hoses for filling stations and the battle went all the way around the apartment building. This was one of those hundred degree or more days in the valley where you had to cool off. The apartment did not have air conditioning. You had to be outside. We had a lot of fun that day. It went on for hours and hours.
I remember one very hot summer day a house across the street started on fire. The roof all of a sudden caught fire. The fire department came quickly and only a 5 foot hole was burned in the roof. Someone probably threw a cigarette out of their car or something.
And on one unusual day in the winter time, it snowed. Sherman Oaks doesn't change very much from one season to the next but this winter it did. It actually snowed enough to stick on the ground for several hours. Snow ball fights ensued. Nobody that we knew had ever seen snow in the valley.
Double rim shot, cymbal!
5
My First Year in School
My first year in school, I must say I was destined to be an outcast. It tells it all in my first year (kindergarten) school pictures. In the picture I have this clueless look on my face. I have a bowl haircut, with bangs, wire rimmed round glasses. A bright blue long sleeve shirt, with little red and blue flowers on it. Brown worn out corduroy high-water pants, and very scuffed up black dress shoes. They were scuffed up because I liked to skip! Is that pathetic or what? This is what happens when your parents divorce when your 7 years old. What in God's name was my Mom thinking dressing me like that? On top of that my Mom called me by my middle name, Pat. This was the textbook recipe for failure. It was some kind of cutsie thing about calling my brother and me Pat and Mike after that Tracy and Hepburn movie. I hated living with that name so much I can't tell you. When I entered Junior High School I changed it to my real first name John, which I didn't like either, but it was better than Pat. Their is only a billion Johns out in the world. A friend of my Mom's started calling me JP when I was 12. I changed my name to JP, it fit good. So indeed I was an outcast, all of my life, I still am at age 43. I'm not sure why exactly. I never fit in at school. I was always the last to be picked for a team. You know the type. It might not have been so bad had my Mom helped a little with the clothes and stuff. I remember one year in elementary school my Mom had me in a suede vest with the leather strings hanging down. Hippie clothes for the early 70's. It looked really cool Mom, thanks. Later on in school Mike and I went with rock band tee shirts, brown corduroy pants and dirty worn out tennis shoes, and long hair. Another good look.
My First Day at School
This was one of the few days I was driven to school. I remember Mom and Dad pulling up in front of Riverside Drive Elementary in the VW bug. Both my parents wanted to be there for this event. We walked to the auditorium where their were lots of people milling around. This auditorium seemed huge to me at age 5. The look of it was very institutional and plain. The seats numbered only in the hundreds, maybe 200 seats. All blond wood seats that fold down when you go to sit in them. And the very old looking square speckled black and white linoleum. The ceiling had these white tiles with a lot of holes in them, all the ceilings in the school had these. I remember counting those holes over and over. Their was a raised stage with a proscenium arch and a very crude looking red curtain. The parents were directed to line the kids up in front of the teacher that was picked for them. I think when we registered we were given a teachers name. A teacher said on a microphone to please line up. When it was time for the parents to tell their kids to walk over and get in line, the volume in the auditorium got much louder. The sounds of crying and screaming echoed on the shiny white enamel walls, not to mention little puddles or urine here and there. I was not crying. I remember being a little nervous and maybe a little excited. After this excitement I believe whichever teacher was yours, you would follow them to their classroom, with the parents in tow. We toured the school as we walked. We then all sat down in the tiny classroom chairs and listened to the Kindergarten Orientation, whatever that was. It was over before I knew it and we were back in the car. The real first day of school was tomorrow, without our parents.