A Not-So-Pleasant-Valley-Sunday (or Up Yours, Thomas Wolfe)

(As it was then)

Within the walls of this house I spent early part of my childhood. It’s one of the smaller houses in the 4500 block of Grand Avenue, located between Tulane and Princeton in southwest Little Rock. It doesn’t look very big and, in truth, it wasn’t. The big window was formerly flanked by two conical cedar trees, which were eventually cut down for the flower bush you see here. That window opened into the living room. On the west side of the big window were the three bedrooms where Mom, Dad, four boys and three girls daily fought for the one bathroom located in the center of the hall. I still remember the day we installed the showerhead over the tub. It made Saturday night bath time go a lot quicker. A floor furnace was situated in the little square hall around the bedroom doors, where on particularly cold mornings you would find most of us straddled over the grate, the rising heat blowing up our pajamas and nightgowns. In the summer, there was a single large air conditioner on the east side that cooled the whole house. The rest of the time, we relied on open windows. The porch window to the east gave us a view of the street from the dining table, while those looking in could see past it into the galley kitchen and washer/dryer hookup before exiting out the only other door to the outside world, our backyard. For the record, it wasn’t always pink. Sometimes it was a dark brown. It depended on my dad’s mood and his relationship with my neighbors. Fortunately, there wasn’t much to paint... just the porch, the east side of the house and the framework around the windows and under the roof. The rest of the walls of the house were made up of a material similar to our roof, meaning it was covered in tiny glass-like granules, meant to reflect the heat of the sun away from the interior of the house. A friend of mine recently said that material might have been a form of asbestos…always good to know 30 years after the fact. My first memory in this house was climbing out of a crib in the front bedroom to catch my mom watching her afternoon soaps. This is also where the only phonograph record player and radio were located. Sometimes the TV was directly underneath the main window, other times, it separated the living room from the dining area. Since it then faced away from us, we soon became acclimated to eating in the living room and the dining table was relegated to laundry, homework and the occasional game board. I remember the occasional times I couldn’t sleep and snuck out for some late-night viewing. Back then, of course, there were only four stations to choose from and they all signed off after a certain point. Then I was forced to stare at either an Indian-head test pattern or static. I would turn the set off, watching as the glowing screen shrank to a tiny dot before fading away completely in the dark. Other times, I woke up extra early. Usually it was on a Saturday, where I had to suffer through farm reports before the cartoons commenced. On rare occasions, my parents were watching something of special interest. One morning in July of 1969, I poked my head around the corner to see Apollo 11 take off from the Kennedy Space Center on its way to the moon. A few days later man set foot on another astral body for the first time ever. Since it was late at night, I don’t remember if we were allowed to stay up and watch. There was a lot of growing up in that house, not just for me but for all of us, parents included. We learned to cook, some better than others. One time, Mom tried a recipe that called for beer to sauté hamburgers. There was a little too much beer in the mix, so on at least one occasion, some poor cow died in vain. A sister once tried to make brownies that literally bounced off the floor. Another sibling was doing Lord knows what with tomatoes and at least one found its way to the ceiling, where I think it stayed until the day we moved. I still don’t know how Mom and Dad were able to get all us kids up for school without killing at least one kid a day. The girls were allowed first dibs on the bathroom, then the boys. We made our way to the dining room where, depending on the time of year, we had cereal, buttered toast, oatmeal and, occasionally, eggs and bacon. My parents not only cooked for us, but would sometimes feed some kids down the street who they felt didn’t get the nutritional start they thought they needed. We were then all packed into the family station wagon and taken to a nearby parochial school, listening to the Mighty 1090, KAAY, along the way. Not everything was indoors, mind you. There was plenty of play time in the front or back yard or further down the street to play with the Lehmans, the Tedders, the Swindells, the Pattersons and the Greens. Often was the time the grass under the shade of the house was worn down to dirt level by the scamper of growing feet. In the winter, the same shade kept a sliver of ice-hardened snow on the ground long after everything else had melted. Among our favorite games was ‘Hot Lava’ where we took advantage of the two or three swing sets at our disposal and swung off them to stay off the ground, lest we burn our feet. Variations of ‘Cowboys and Indians’ or ‘World War II’ often had one or both parents stepping outside to see at least two children lying in a heap on the ground, not daring to show any sign of life until the all-clear was given by the winners. ‘Red Rover’ was also a big hit when there were enough of us, which was often. We got pretty tough trying to break through each other’s line. Street football was also a big hit. We pretty much kept to the ‘touch’ rules, but couldn’t resist the occasional foray into someone’s soft grassy yard where a full tackle was too impulsive to resist. We moved from the neighborhood in the summer of 1973. Rarely was the time we ever found our way back there, but it did happen. This past weekend, I took my family to the Old Mill in North Little Rock for our annual holiday pictures. As we looked for a place to have lunch, the attraction was simply too great for me to pass up. I crossed the Arkansas River to 12th Street and turned at my old Catholic school. As an anchor-reporter in Little Rock two years before, I attended the official closing down of the school after over 100 years of parochial education. The church where many of us received our First Communion remained open, but the windows of the classrooms were now covered in black paint. Finding the house from there will forever be imprinted in my head, having walked that mile or two to the house every day for seven years. A few blocks later, we came into the neighborhood. I mentally noted passing a LRPD squad car doing some investigating before we hit our old street. It had been over 30 years since we stayed longer than a few minutes, but I couldn’t help staring. So much had changed. I expected the row of tall pine trees down the street to be gone or at least pruned to some degree, but not removed completely. Many of the formerly pristine lawns were threadbare and dirty. Cars were parked not only in the driveways, but on the lawns of many houses. City trash bins were left out on the curb, regardless of what day pick-up was. Nearly all the houses had a fence. The street was barely wide enough to allow two cars to pass each other. I pulled into a house at the end of the street to turn around and noticed the place where our neighborhood ‘old lady’ lived. Every street had at least one lady who would yell at the kids to get off their lawns and was never home on Halloween, then would surprise us by being legitimately nice to you around Christmas. Ours was named ‘Old Lady Lydle’. I looked at her house…or rather, where it once stood. I saw a grass-and-debris covered plot of land with a walkway leading to two concrete steps going nowhere. I stopped the car in front of the Patterson’s old house and looked across the street. The house I grew up in was no longer there, not as I knew it. The new owner(s) had expanded the front porch east, enclosed it, replaced the walls with some sort of rock/shale siding and allowed Mother Nature to cut loose on everything else. Where there was a front lawn was now a forest. My wife tugged at my sleeve, motioning forward. Three rather tough-looking guys were sitting on the corner of the Green’s house (now a dirt mound surrounding a fire hydrant) glancing our way. I quickly took a shot of my past with my cell phone and drove off.

(As it looks now)

Why Old People Don’t Like Birthdays

As a child of the 1960s, I often wondered what my life would be like in the year 2000. I know I would be 40 for most of that magical year, but, other than that, the possibilities were endless. I, like most kids dreaming of the future, imagined Jetson-like cars soaring overhead, robots and computers serving humanity, wearing suits that would make Ace Frehley jealous, space travel for the masses (with at least one lunar base) and public relations with some alien race. I myself would be a tall man with a well-trimmed beard and flowing dark brown hair. As of last week, I officially became one year short of the half-century mark. Now, well into the 21st Century, I am a ‘big and tall’ man with flowing grey hair and a beard that reminds anyone over the 7th grade of ‘The Big Lebowski’ and under the 7th grade as Santa Claus. The only thing soaring over my head are gas prices for the still earth-bound cars, humanity serves the computer, no lunar bases, only a select group of rurals who CLAIM contact with aliens and Ace Frehley now dresses like me. A tradition in my family is that the birthday boy or girl gets to pick the restaurant where we celebrate. My son hasn’t gone beyond McDonald’s. My daughter likes a local ritzy spot called the Market Place that gives away a free dessert called a ‘Chocolate Mess’ (basically a tall glass covered in fudge with vanilla ice cream, whipped topping and a lit candle). My wife also liked this place, but I imagine would prefer a couple of other ritzier joints in town that serve wine with no kids. Me…I go for the Japanese hibachi. I like the personal surroundings as the master chef literally plays with our food, creating huge bursts of flame from the sautéed onions, slicing and dicing our meal with expert dexterity. …at least, that’s how it’s supposed to work. We filed our way into a spacious eatery named for the famous dormant volcano that most people envision when they hear the name of Japan. We entered over a bridge spanning an indoor waterfall and stream filled with large orange and white koi that looked like goldfish on steroids. To the left were a set of tables for those not intent on the hibachi experience, while on the right was a sushi bar with a few patrons enjoying the nutritional benefits of raw fish and the sharp tang of wasabi. If you’ve never tried wasabi, it is a green concoction that makes horseradish taste like mayonnaise in comparison. As a comparison, at a wedding once, I accidentally put an enormous slab of what I thought was mayonnaise onto a cracker. I spent the next ten minutes trying to claw my brain out through my forehead. We were first informed that this was a members-only restaurant (being in a dry county, establishments that serve alcohol must be registered as ‘private clubs’), so we dutifully paid the membership fee and made our way to the chef’s table, where we then had to wait until the area around the hibachi (or cooking surface) was filled. Apparently, the chef doesn’t play to a partially packed house. We made our orders. I noticed an item called ‘Sukiyaki Steak’ and asked for it. I was familiar with the song ‘Sukiyaki’ from many years ago, the first in a foreign language that reached the top of the American music charts. I also knew the word itself had nothing to do with the song. It was placed there by a stateside producer so the American audience would recognize it. Before I describe our hostess, I want to emphasize first and foremost I have the utmost respect for Japan, its people and its culture. Their traditional music is melodic and serene, the realm of theatre, especially Noh and Kabuki, is awash with originality and pageantry and the Shinto faith is a religion of honor, love and peace of mind. Despite being bitter enemies in my parents’ day, the ability of the people to rise from the atomic ashes to take their place as a world power mere decades later stand as a testament to the enduring spirit of the Land of the Rising Sun. Having said that, our hostess was a cross between a Stepford Wife and Mrs. Roboto. She had a face that seemed to be surgically fixed in a permanent smile, reminding me of the character of Joo Dee, the ever-agreeable tour guide of Ba Sing Se in the cartoon series ‘Avatar: The Last Airbender’, only not as personable. A request by my daughter for a glass of apple juice was met with the curt ‘One serving only’. Smile. My son ordered chicken strips from the kids menu. ‘We don’t cook that at station. We bring to you’ she replied. Smile. My wife asked for boiled rice instead of fried. ‘I bring to you later’ she said. Smile. A frequent patron sat next to me and wondered if the red-hatted chef would work at our table, which made me turn to notice the three or four chefs did, in fact, all wear different colored hats. The patron said the one in red was notorious for setting bonfires in the dining hall. Thankfully, once the area was filled by another family, our cook, wearing a yellow hat, rolled his wares to our spot. ‘Hellloooo, how are youuuuu? Heh heh heh! We’re gonna make some goooood fooood tonight. Heh heh heh’, he said in a voice that made me fidget in my seat and the womenfolk squirm. I’m almost positive that, in his native language and among his fellow countrymen, he is a bright, hard-working young man intent on making each meal the most enjoyable and delectable. When using English in his shtick, however, he emanated a personality that college professors would call ‘spooky’. Even if he wasn’t wearing the red hat, he must have placed second in the ‘Commit Arson in Your Own Workplace’ competition. Within minutes, the metal surface heated up and a quick spraying of cooking oil and a liquid I could only guess was nitroglycerin was squirted on and ignited. I noticed out of the corner of my eye the patron next to me moving his chair back rather quickly. I did the same. The rest were caught in the heat and blinding flash of the fireball. The chef then placed a couple of eggs on the grill, spinning them around and balancing them deftly on his spatula before breaking them and chopping them up. Then, without warning, he said to my wife, ‘Ooookay, catch’ and flipped a blob of egg at her face. I think the idea was for her to catch it in her mouth. Instead, it bounced off her right cheek onto the floor. The kids, of course, wanted their chance and met the same fate. I was adept with tossing the occasional movie popcorn, so I had a little more success, with only a stray strand lodging in my right eye. In short order, the vegetables, shrimp, chicken and beef were on the grill, spreading a mouth-watering aroma around the dining area. This was quickly quashed by the addition of some heavy syrupy substance that I could only guess would be the famed ‘sukiyaki sauce’. It all but blanketed the smell of the steak and veggies, which were then shoveled onto my plate. Lesson learned. My son had already received his chicken strips and wolfed them down, only to now be forced to sit and watch as the rest of us got our All-Star produced meal, so he sat, head bowed, as we began eating. I felt exceedingly sorry for the little guy, as did his sister and mother, who all cast sideward glances as we dropped a spoonful of our meals onto his now-empty plate. Throughout all this, the chef asked my wife at least three times ‘No friiieed rice for youuuu, right?’, to which she replied in the affirmative. Still, after he had concluded his routine and carted his ensemble away, she had not received her rice. She brought this up to the robo-hostess who came to check on us. ‘I have not yet received my boiled rice’, my wife said. ‘You sure?’, the hostess asked. Smile. ‘Yes’, my wife said. Five minutes later, the hostess came back with a small bowl of white rice. ‘Sorry’, she said. Smile. We left in a hurry once the bill was settled. No tip. I apologized to my family for the ordeal they endured at my expense. Next year, we’re trying the Gyro place downtown near the bank. Hopa!