Cardboard and Foxtails

Every time I walk past a store, my eyes instinctively scan the dumpster area. I know what I’m looking for, even if I no longer have any use for it. I am looking for a large discarded cardboard box, preferably one that has recently held a major appliance.

I have cycled from Paris to Geneva, skied down Squaw Valley’s KT-22 at fifty miles an hour, and gone white-water rafting on the Clackamas and American Rivers. But none of these, I repeat, none of these can compare to the youthful thrill of cardboard sliding on the grassy hillside behind our and the Montgomery’s houses.

Back before the Internet, before Pong, before VCRs, even before we had color television, summers in our neighborhood were spent outdoors. We built rickety forts, pretended to be spies or cowboys, and held circuses and fairs with made-up carnival games at each other’s houses. But those were all just killing time. The real action was to be had sliding on a cardboard box down an empty hillside.

By June, the oat grass had reached two or three feet in height and had turned golden. It was ready. First, we would scour the neighborhood to find suitably large pieces of cardboard. Occasionally one could be found in someone’s basement, left over from Christmas. Then, the dried grass had to be carefully flattened to make a bobsled-like run. That first pressing required weight and patience, sitting on the cardboard and inching downhill, ironing the grass as you went. Then the fun began as we made the first tentative test runs, sitting on the cardboard and pulling the leading edge up with your hands to resemble the front of a toboggan. Hidden rocks were painfully discovered and tossed down the hill into the blackberry patch. With each pass, the run would get faster and faster. We would dare each other to go headfirst. Then two at a time. Then three. Then standing up. Then actually inside the box. The run was seldom long, no more than sixty to eighty feet, but that didn’t matter. We kept at it from early afternoon (you couldn’t slide in the morning because dew would make the grass wet) until we could no longer see. There was no competition to speak of. We didn’t time ourselves or declare winners. Each run was an adrenaline rush unto itself. We laughed and screamed and hiked back up the slippery slope towing our cardboard sleds.

The ne plus ultra of sliding was the refrigerator box. We seldom came across those, but when we did it meant all-hands-on-deck. Four, five, six, or even more could clamber on, grabbing shirts and wrapping arms around each other as we tipped over the edge of the level section onto the pitch. The speed you could attain was startling, which often led to “chickens” bailing out early. To do so might save you a trip into the blackberries, but it also assured you a mouthful of foxtails.

With time, each run would wear out, developing patches of bare dirt that stopped a slider cold, sending him or her catapulting off the front into the weeds. We worked our way across the hillside, developing new runs as we needed them. Even though we had skateboards and bikes, the lure of the cardboard was supreme, only to fade as Labor Day approached. As soon as school started, the hillside would become abandoned until the next year, with the cardboard left right where it had been last ridden. I suppose somebody picked it up over the winter, but I don’t know.

Here it is the middle of summer (and the middle of my life, as well) and my eyes scan the golden hillsides of Marin as I travel through the county. But I never see anyone cardboard sliding. Oh, I do occasionally see an abandoned piece of cardboard here and there on a grassy knoll, but either the sliding is done out of sight, or it has simply gone out of fashion. It is hard to imagine any modern kid being as dedicated to the thrill of the hill as much as we were. The names of the cardboard sliding legends are still on my tongue: Gary and Lynny Montgomery, Michael Baroni, John and Kathy Clark, Barry Roberts. I hesitate to add my name to such a pantheon, but I was there, too. Now, you may regard my story as being told by some fossil who used to play with a hoop and stick in the old school yard, but those summers of cardboard and foxtails were as rich in joy and excitement as any I have experienced since.

Muffins and Morphines

For me, homemade blueberry muffins are synonymous with weekends at home as a child. No school for a couple of days and my mother is making a special, leisurely breakfast. The smell of a blueberry muffin wafting hot from the oven fills my memory and I am six years old again, helping my mom cook in our Mill Valley home with the kitchen window that afforded a view of Mount Tamalpais in the distance.

Our kitchen was definitely unique. Even then, I knew it was different than in my playmate’s homes. Teak paneled walls were set off by Chinese-red cabinets, blue-green Formica countertops, an old-fashioned braided carpet of many hues, and a pastel turquoise-green refrigerator. This appliance requires some explaining. Back in 1955, when our house was built, appliances mostly came in one color – white. To my mother, that simply wasn’t in her color scheme. So the brand new Frigidaire was hauled down to the local Volkswagen dealership, where it was given a lovely coat of what I think was called “Birch Green.” That is how I grew up with a VW Bug in the house.

Back to breakfast. My job was to mix up the juice. I would get the Donald Duck concentrate from the freezer at the bottom of the fridge. Now, in my book, anything Disney-related had to be the best; therefore Donald Duck orange juice was the one I insisted that my mother purchase. They should have had me on TV – I would’ve given

them a glowing testimonial. Anyway, I would peel the lid off, pry the pasty concentrate out of the can with a fork, and then add, I think, four cups of water to the pitcher. Finally, I would stir everything with a big spoon, getting orange juice all over my hands, which, of course, had not been washed beforehand.

Meanwhile, my mother made the muffins. She would put the Duncan Hines mix in the bowl, add an egg and then, instead of draining the little can of blueberries into the sink (where they would have stained the white porcelain anyway), she would drain the juice into a measuring cup and use it as part of the liquid for the mix. It turned the finished product a lovely lavender color and added lots of flavor. Naturally, since our muffins sported a remarkable hue, they merited their own remarkable name. My mother called them blueberry “morphines.” It was an odd little joke that we shared, made even odder by the fact that my parents (both doctors) always kept a few ampoules of real morphine in the green refrigerator for medical emergencies, should they be called out in the middle of the night (which my father occasionally was).

As the muffins would bake, my mother would fry up some “Li’l Smokie” sausages and then we would all sit down to the best breakfast in Mill Valley, made all the more special by our having made it together.

I loved that my mother and I shared silly in-jokes. Back in the day, I would have been stirring up some “orangutan” juice. For lunch she might fry up a couple of “hangle-burglers.” And then there were always the blueberry “morphines.” I still make them that way after all this time, and my mother now gone for five years. I also share in-jokes with my daughter, Jessica. Naturally, I can’t divulge them to you, but if you ever run into Jessica, ask her about “kitty sex germs,” what, exactly “floats,” and the mysterious regions of the “BMA.” She’ll know exactly who sent you.

Cubans and Bears

Among the many bands featured at this year’s Marin County Fair was Tiempo Libre, from Cuba via Miami. I was really looking forward to some smooth Latin rhythms (I'm a would-be conga player), so I headed on down to the Civic Center with my wife, Pat. We arrived just as Tiempo Libre were finishing their first set, so we wandered off in search of a chocolate frozen yogurt and an espresso milkshake from the Ben & Jerry’s truck.

As soon as the band started playing again, a dozen or so dancers hurried in front of the bandstand and started doing their salsa moves. I loved watching them and wished Pat and I had had more time to continue our own salsa lessons from a few years back. But after a couple of songs, we got up anyway and faked it as best we could. I was just getting into a groove, when I heard my name called out over the music. A tall, handsome black man came over and wanted to know if I had worked on a production of West Side Story up on Mount Tamalpais. When I said, yes, he shouted over the throbbing beat that his name was Ariel Cisneros and he had been in the show. Then he gave me a big bear hug.

Whoa! That was eleven years ago. I was amazed that he recognized me and that he was still so enthusiastic about the experience. As I continued to dance, buoyed by this unexpected surprise, I couldn’t help thinking about that production of West Side Story. It was one of my favorite shows to work on, and provided me with one of my favorite theatre stories.

The year was 1999. The Mountain Play Association had contracted with eight dancers from the Ballet Nacional de Cuba to play the members of Sharks gang. I was hired to choreograph the stage fights. In this updated version, set in present day New York City, I had devised a “rumble” that involved butterfly knives, pipes, chains, two-by-fours, aluminum baseball bats, skateboards and, of course, fists.

Everyone was enthusiastic, as they almost always are when theatrical mayhem is in the air. And for the Cuban dancers, especially, this was something doubly new. New for me was how to choreograph actors from another country. But, between their smattering of English, my pitiable Spanish, and a whole lot of body language, we got along just fine.

The first phrase I learned was “despacio,” which means “slowly.” For those who only see the finished product, stage fight choreography is actually rehearsed extremely slowly at first, so that the timing of each move gets set firmly into the performers’ muscle memories. It is only as opening night approaches that the speed is allowed to slowly approximate “normal” speed. Unfortunately, with stage fighting, the adrenalin wants to kick in earlier than that, thus the constant reminder to take things “despacio.”

The other key phrase was “ojos a ojos,” literally, “eyes to eyes.” With so many potentially dangerous objects flying around— including body parts—it’s critical for stage combatants to visually “check in” with their partners prior to each move. It’s astounding, but in a split second of eye-to-eye contact you can actually tell the mental and physical state of your fellow combatant. Sometimes a choreographed fall will temporarily scramble his or her thought processes, or it is not uncommon for a subsequent move or sequence to be forgotten completely. Without “ojos a ojos,” a punch might be thrown without a proper reaction—such as ducking—from the recipient.

Rehearsals in the Park School auditorium were a gas, and everyone got used to my constant side-coaching during run-throughs, yelling out “despacio” and “ojos a ojos” loudly and at regular intervals.

Finally, as the weather improved, we moved the play up to the Cushing Amphitheatre on Mount Tam—a Depression-era Works Progress Administration project that seats over three thousand on natural stone tiers. Rehearsing outdoors adds its own challenges and distractions, so I was relegated to using a microphone during our run-throughs, which were now nearing performance speed.

Our final dress rehearsal found me once again at the microphone. No longer in “despacio mode,” I watched the chaos unfold on the stage below. Everything was going swimmingly, but I felt the need for one last reminder. But instead of “ojos a ojos,” for some inexplicable reason, my side-coaching instructions came out “Osos a osos!”

Though the casual bystander might not have noticed, the effect, to my eyes, was immediate and unmistakable. Eight pairs of Cuban “ojos” quickly turned in my direction – some in mid-punch and others in mid-swing. Time seemed to slow down for a brief second and it was as if I could read their minds telepathically: What the hell does he mean? “Osos a osos”? “Bears to bears”? Are there bears in the amphitheatre?

But thorough training is a wonderful thing. Without skipping a Cuban beat, everyone launched back into the brawl, and only later did I catch quite a bit good-natured teasing for confusing the heck out of the actors at a critical point in the fight, even if only momentarily.

I loved working on that show. I was even secretly a bit tickled when the reviewer from the Marin Independent Journal mentioned the fight choreography ahead of the director in his write-up. And I guess my enthusiasm must have laid down some good karmic pathways as well. For here I was, more than a decade later, swaying to the pounding rhythms of Tiempo Libre, watching Ariel up on stage performing a wild conga with the band leader, and still smiling from a welcome blast from past.

Bourbon and Bitters

Angostura Aromatic Bitters is not that common an ingredient in modern day bartending, but to my mother, it was an integral part of her life. My parents always started off each evening with a cocktail. I never saw them inebriated, but the evening drink was as regular as food on the table. And not just any Martini, Seven and Seven, or Gin and Tonic would do. Those common libations were reserved for our regular pool parties, along with my mother’s legendary Strawberry Daiquiris. No, as I came of age, I also came to appreciate the breadth of their alcoholic repertoire, which included Whiskey Sours, Apricot Sours, Sidecars, El Presidentes, Piña Coladas, and an oddity know simply as an Old Waldorf’s Last. This last somehow blended gin, milk and ice into a frothy mixture that I assure you will challenge the recipe knowledge of virtually any barkeep.

But, high above all these exotic and unusual drinks was the Old Fashioned. According to Wikipedia, it may have been the first true cocktail, since, in response to a reader's letter asking to define the word in an 1806 issue of The Balance and Columbia Repository in Hudson, New York, the paper's editor replied that it was a “potent concoction of spirits, bitters, water, and sugar: a kind of bittered sling.” The first use of the specific name "Old Fashioned" was for a Bourbon whiskey cocktail in the 1880s, at the Pendennis Club, a gentlemen’s establishment in Louisville, Kentucky. The recipe is said to have been invented by a bartender at that club, and popularized by a club member and bourbon distiller, Colonel James E. Pepper, who brought it to the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel bar in New York City.

In any case, the Old Fashioned was the defining cocktail for my mother. It is a surprisingly simple drink: Place a couple of large ice cubes in a glass. Add a sugar cube and drizzle it with a dozen or so drops of Angostura Bitters (“By Appointment to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II”). Carefully pour in two ounces of bourbon whiskey (it was always Jim Beam, in our house) down the edge of the glass and add a half slice of orange and a maraschino cherry. Don’t stir, but let sit for ten to fifteen minutes as the ingredients slowly meld. This last step is critical to mellow the harsh taste of the bourbon and bitters.

The very name, Old Fashioned, suggests that this is a drink best savored in a dark paneled booth in a downtown San Francisco restaurant, the kind that specializes in Porterhouse steaks and fried calamari, while sitting on a leather banquette after a hard day’s work in the financial district. But that would be too limiting. I have a photograph of my parents playing horseshoes up at White Wolf Lodge in Yosemite, with two Old Fashioneds resting on a stump in the setting sun. I know that her favorite way to concoct one was at our house in Lake Tahoe, where the crisp winter air and a short section of icicle from our eaves substituting for the ice cubes made the drink that much more delicious.

But the Old Fashioned traveled everywhere with my mother. Even when she consented to go trekking through Bhutan with my father, she astounded all by setting up bar on a granite boulder next to a raging river in the Himalayas. She brought out the bourbon, bitters, sugar cubes, orange slices and cherries. The only ingredient missing in that remote al fresco establishment were the ice cubes, but a dash of glacier melt from the river was put to good use. She was not to be denied her slice of familiarity.

Alas, the house at Tahoe is gone, I haven’t been to White Wolf Lodge in decades, and my mother, too, is no longer with us.

But, tonight I bought all the necessaries and made my first attempt at a real Old Fashioned. As my wife and I sat on our porch, with the late afternoon sun filtering beautifully through the green leaves, I waited for my Old Fashioned to meld, and then sipped a toast to my departed mother. She met many contradictions in her life, struggled to become a physician in a world that, at the time, barely appreciated women in that role, and fought against preconceptions of what she could or could not accomplish. But, what I remember most is that she knew what she liked and spoke her mind often. If I can arrive at the end of my days with half the strength that she demonstrated, I will call myself a lucky son.

Travel Posters and Miracles

I saw an Air France poster the other day in the window of a travel agency. It had a lovely photo of the Eiffel Tower, shot at night, from high above Paris. Oddly enough, it got me thinking about miracles.

The date was May 1, 1972 and I was where I usually was at 9:30 in the morning – in French class at Tamalpais High School in Mill Valley. There were only a dozen of us juniors present that day and Mr. Schwarzbart, our teacher, was taking a short break by having us listen to French pronunciation tapes on the headphones that dangled down from above each desk. He had left the room and we were immersed in the sounds of La Belle France. Whatever the lesson was is lost to me now, for we were rudely interrupted by events beyond our tiny classroom.

Just as we settled into the lesson, with our headphones drowning out the noises coming from the hallway and adjoining classrooms, there was the barely muffled sound of an intense explosion that rocked the classroom and thumped me firmly in the chest. Shattered windows rained glass on the floor and we were suddenly more wide awake than teenagers are used to being at that hour. Shucking our headsets, we were greeted by the wafting smell of high explosive and concrete dust. We were also coming to the realization that we had been very, very lucky. First, that we had been wearing out headsets, thus protecting our eardrums. Second, that all of the windows facing the light well were covered with French travel posters, which kept the window glass from blowing freely across the classroom.

Mr. Schwarzbart quickly returned and led us out of the building. Naturally, school was cancelled for the rest of the day, and we all went home. As it turns out, the explosion was caused by half a stick of dynamite planted in a urinal in the boy’s restroom, just across the light well from our class, only 15 feet away. A student had planned the explosion to coincide with a series of May Day anarchist demonstrations that included two similar bombs at local Bank of America branches. One had gone off and one was later disarmed.

What our explosion had to do with May Day was, and is, beyond my comprehension. But I was struck by the double coincidence that certainly prevented serious injuries in our French class. What if we hadn’t had our headphones? What if the windows hadn’t been covered? What if? Some might hasten to call it a miracle, somehow staged by a divine power. I can understand that point of view. But if I go along with that interpretation, then what to do with other so-called miracles that are similarly credited?

Just a few weeks ago, a plane crashed in Libya with only one survivor, a nine year-old boy named Ruben van Assouw. A miracle, some people claimed. But what of the other 103 passengers who perished, including his parents? Did the same “miracle” take their lives instead of saving them? Or what of the tornadoes that “miraculously” spare one house and family, while devastating another? Can the Divine be so capricious, or do we put our faith in miracles simply because we hope that fate will be kinder to us if we believe?

I am beginning to think that miracles are simply unexpectedly positive outcomes arising amidst dire circumstances. Not that they aren’t cause for celebration by the fortunate recipients, but a measure of respect is due for those on whom the “miracle” has not shown its beneficence.

Getting back to Mr. Schwarzbart, I found out many years later that when he was seven years old, his father, an Austrian Jew, was arrested in Belgium and shipped off to Vichy France. Persuaded to do so by Belgian Resistance workers, Paul's mother let her son be taken into hiding during World War II. Assuming the last name of neighbors, Paul was sent to a Catholic boarding school where he learned the prayers in Latin, served at Mass, and took communion, all the while keeping his true identity secret. He did his lessons and was an active Cub Scout. He thought he was the only Jewish child among 125 pupils. Much later he would learn that, in fact, 60 of his schoolmates were Jewish boys secretly hiding with him. He was reunited with his mother after the war, but his father died at the Buchenwald concentration camp in Germany. Paul and his mother eventually settled in the United States where he attended university and embarked on a 45-year teaching career, ending up in our French classroom in Mill Valley.

I am sure Mr. Schwarzbart would not have connected the miracle of his successfully hiding from the Nazis, with the tragic death of his father. But I know he would have seen the miracle in the willingness of others to risk their own lives to rescue innocent children from persecution. That is the kind of miracle that I do believe in, and that is clearly within our grasp.

Red Vines and Leather

Red Vines have never been my favorite candy. That distinction would almost always go to Jolly Ranchers (or as my wife calls them “Jolly Rogers”). But the taste and smell of Red Vines makes me think fondly of those I would purchase at the baseball field snack bar during my brief stint in the Strawberry Little League.

Back then, I followed dutifully in my older brother, John’s, footsteps. He played the clarinet; I played clarinet. He took French in middle school; I took French in middle school. But before that, he played Little League baseball, so that’s where I was headed at the ripe young age of seven.

You have to understand that I am not a natural athlete. What sports I have excelled at, such as skiing and cycling, took a lot of dedication and effort. And baseball was clearly not my thing. Nevertheless, I tried out one Saturday in spring and found myself as a proud member of the Beavers. As I picture my teammates, it was obvious that we were more eager Beavers than athletically talented ones. While I can’t remember many of their names, we were definitely a collection of misfits. In fact, several of us ended up in the arts, if that says anything. Bravely, we embarked on a journey to vanquish the Crickets, Grasshoppers, Ravens and the other assorted fauna of our extremely Little League.

I ended up where all players with my remarkable lack of ability end up: right field. The logic being that right field is where the ball ends up least often. Unfortunately, at Strawberry Field, if you are playing a late afternoon game and are camped out in right field, the setting sun sits squarely in your eyes, with the rest of the infield plunged into deep shadow, not unlike the kind of light and dark found on the moon. The only warning you get that something important is coming your way is the sudden crack of the bat and your teammates yelling “Get it! Get it!” Oh, how I would have liked to do exactly that. But with the ball descending in a direct line with the sun, the chances were surprisingly small. In fact, I don’t think that I ever really “got one.” I never even knew where to run to get under the ball, so my only response was to wait for it to hit the grass (groans from the infield), chase after it, and throw it in the vague direction of second base, which I couldn’t see, having just been blinded by the sun (more groans). As the ball rolled to its final destination, and the opposing players circled the bases, I would resume my useless position in right field, having effectively passed the buck to those more capable than I.

Standing at the plate, I was not much better. I do clearly remember my first at-bat, though. Our coach told me to stand very close to home plate. He said that since I was so short (and presumably vulnerable), the pitcher would want to avoid hitting me and thus give me a walk. Whether he underestimated the pitcher’s compassion, or his accuracy, is unknown at this point. What is known is that the first pitch I ever faced in a genuine Little League game hit me squarely on the upper left arm. After I got over my shock at this affront to my seven-year-old dignity, I was encouraged to “take” first base, having bravely “taken one” for the team. From there, I made it to second on the next hit, before the side was retired and I retreated to right field to nurse my sore arm and chew on the convenient leather tie that dangled from the web of my glove. Gnawing on that tiny string of leather is yet another strong memory of my time waiting for the call-up to “The Show.”

There was one afternoon when I did get a taste of the Big Leagues. We were losing badly, as usual, and our frustrated coach decided to humiliate the infield by having them swap positions with us outfielders. And that is how I found myself, for the one and only time, as guardian of second base. Now, you have to understand that I had no more idea of what to do at second base than I would have had at the controls of a Boeing 707, but there I was. I didn’t even know where to stand, until shouted instructions from the dugout clarified my position. Apparently, you are not supposed to be standing literally atop the base, as the name would suggest. Fortunately, nothing much happened. Oh, perhaps a ball came my way that I made a vague attempt to catch, but I can’t be sure. The glare of flash bulbs from the sporting press as they covered this momentous occasion makes my memory a bit hazy. But if the point was really and truly to humiliate the supposedly better players, then my improbable occupation of hallowed ground was a grand success.

As I recall, we lost every game that season, and all but one the next, before I moved on to the Cub Scouts, where I was decidedly more successful. While I didn’t miss the disgusting dugouts with their carpet of litter or the daily reminders of my inability to master any of the game’s skills, I did miss the snack bar, where a packet of Red Vines could be had for ten cents, and a hot dog with mustard for a quarter. As often as I could, I would venture down to the field to watch my friends play, slowly gnaw on a Red Vine and reminisce about my brief stay as the franchise right fielder with the Strawberry Little League Beavers.