Brooklyn and Queens

Once upon a time (okay, last July), in a land far, far away (all right, Brooklyn), their lived a benevolent King and Queen, who were known to all as Jefferson and Julia Cook-Slink. Hearing from their e-heralds that their only niece, the fair-haired and well-read Princess Jessica Juliana of Novato, was desirous of visiting their Fair City, they opened up their loft apartment to the young Princess, her incorrigible father and her beautiful and kindly step-mother.

Now, the King and Queen were direct descendents of Thespis, the first Greek actor, so they proclaimed that Jessica and her traveling companions must see a musical entertainment on the Great White Way. Unfortunately, such an outing might have taxed the Royal Purse unduly, but Julia was wise in the ways of Discounted Tickets. She told an enchanting tale of mystical Pre-show Lotteries wherein eager theatre-goers could literally toss their names into a basket at the box office and thus cast their chances to fate for the opportunity to purchase two tickets to the next performance at an Insanely Low, Low Price. This they decided to do.

They spent the day seeing the sights on the Isle of Manhattan and arrived at the chosen venue scant minutes before the Lottery closed. There were four of them (since King Jefferson was off attending a Royal Ball in the guise of a handsome waiter) which meant that two of their names would have to be picked for all to see the evening’s show. Sixty or so citizens from near and far placed their names into the magical Lottery Basket; yet only eleven names would be favored.


Exotic Pashmina Scarves from Native Vendor


But the gods smiled on the Royal Party and both Jessica’s and Julia’s names were chosen. With tickets in hand, they sought sustenance to feed their hungry bellies and bought exotic Pashmina scarves from a sidewalk vendor in Times Square, with which to dress up their humble tourist trappings.

At the appointed hour, they returned to the theatre to see a performance of In the Heights, winner of the 2008 Antoinette Perry Award (which sounds ever so much better than “The Tony”). Jessica sat in the front row of the Orchestra with her father, close enough to literally pat the conductor on his curly-haired pate, if such an urge arose. The overture began and the show wove its tapestry of Latin music and dance. Everyone was enthralled by every aspect of the lively play set in Washington Heights, or Spanish Harlem as it is known to locals. Two hours never passed so quickly or with such joy.


Pat Shea, Rick Negron, me and Jessica


Fortunately, the evening was not over. Queen Julia, who knew many of her constituents on Broadway by name, was well-acquainted with a cast member, Rick Negron, and all were invited backstage after the performance. Moving past throngs of admirers at the Stage Door, all hoping for a glimpse of The Star, Julia and her party were welcomed by the guard at the door and found their way backstage.

Jessica's First Broadway Star

After paying their respects to their friend, Jessica got to meet Prince Corbin Bleu, the star of High School Musical, who had played the lead role of Usnavy in the show. He told her that he was glad his had been her first Broadway show. Her father embarrassed her (as he is wont to do) and then took their picture:

They were not alone on the stage, however. At least twenty other audience members were congratulating a particular actress in the show. This fair maiden, Alicia Tomasko, had joined the cast only two weeks earlier, as a member of the chorus. That is what her boyfriend had come to see the night before. After all, she was fresh out of acting school and this was her first Big Break. He saw her dance and sing in the first two numbers, but when the third scene began, she re-entered as Vanessa, one of the two female leads! The regular Vanessa had tried to go on, but couldn’t continue, so the new Alicia took her place, being expertly guided in her newly-adopted role by the rest of the cast.

Alicia Tomasko

Now, with just two performances under her belt, she was being congratulated by all her Friends and Family, who had arrived in all due haste to witness this true Broadway Miracle. Queen Julia claimed that she could sense a slight nervousness in Vanessa’s performance, but Jessica’s father (who is not unwise in ways of the stage) thought Alicia could have been playing the role for months.

A better first night on Broadway was not to be had for love or money and, as she stood on the set of In the Heights, Jessica wished to her father that she would like to do another play with him someday.

That is how they both came to audition and be cast in Pirates of Penzance, which opens this very night. And for Jessica’s father, the chance to share this glorious occasion with his one and only daughter is the real fairy tale come true. Break a leg, Sweetheart!

Grips and Grades

Do you remember the first time you ever stayed up all night, or pulled an all-nighter in college?

My first time was at Steve Bjerklie's home in Mill Valley. It was my senior year in high school and we somehow managed to talk through the night, mostly about the girls that got away. As the sun came up, I felt giddy that we had cheated the Sandman, but also felt cheated out of something valuable at the same time. I made it through the next day before crashing heavily at about 8pm.

I can't even contemplate pulling an all-night at my age. I get by with seven hours sleep, barely. Even still, the deficit slowly builds up over several days. I know that, sooner or later, I will have to pay back all those stolen hours. Today is one of those days, but Saturday is still three nights away. In between, I have full days of work, final dress rehearsals for Pirates of Penzance, and opening night. Then I can sleep in for a bit, before cleaning the house for our big Halloween party on Sunday. That may be the difference from when I was a teenager - I don't really get to relax on the weekends.

That wasn't the case back in high school, when our TV production class was invited to help out at KQED's annual fund-raising auction. We somehow garnered the exciting gig of camera grips, which is somewhat less glamorous than it sounds. As grips, we trailed along behind the big TV cameras on their rolling tripods and made sure the thick cables didn't get tangled as the cameramen moved from auction table to auction table. There was a fair amount of standing around involved, punctuated by moments of panic as the camera took off for the next set-up. But hanging out together and being part of the the show was the payoff. That, and all the perks.

This may not sound like much, but they did bring in food each night. Since we started at about 7pm, we were pretty hungry by our first break at nine. We feasted on pizza, McDonald's, Burger King, whatever. The teenage male palate is never particularly refined, and as the evening wore on, we were prepared to down anything that remotely resembled food. On our breaks, we could wander around the Cow Palace to check out upcoming auction tables and even operate the phone banks.

We also learned Public Television's deepest and darkest secret. You know those telephone sounds that ring constantly during the auction? Pre-recorded. I know. Shocking. At first we were puzzled that, in the wee hours of the morning, no one could be seen to be picking up phones. But then we put two and two together - and arrived at the obvious.

Our innocence gone forever, we worked far into the night, often quitting only at 2 am, when the auction finally shut down. Still abuzz with caffeine and cola, we took off for the long drive back to Mill Valley on a practically empty Highway 101.

The first weekend passed normally. But after Friday night on the second, I came home and crashed as never before. I awoke to what I assumed was the dawn, only to realize that I had slept clear through the day until six that evening. I got dressed and hopped in my mother's '68 Camaro to head back to the City for another shift. The following day I was fine - I had caught up.

The very last time I had pulled an all-nighter was my final quarter at UC Davis, in 1977. I had an insane schedule, with 10 separate classes. I used to thrive on keeping uber-busy, but since I had classes that overlapped, something had to give.

One night, I finished tutoring French at 10 pm and then dropped off to a well-earned sleep. But something wouldn't let me go all the way under. I tossed and turned for an hour or so and then decided I needed to go over my class schedules. That's when I came really wide awake: The mid-term for my 6-unit Embryology Course was the following morning. Fifty-percent of my grade - and I hadn't been to class in over a month.

My absence wasn't due to slacking, it was because the on-campus SCUBA diving course, for which I was the T.A., ran from 7 to 8am. In theory, I could have made it to Embryology at eight, but I usually had to stay under a hot shower for thirty minutes just to get my body temperature back to normal. Fortunately, I had subscribed to the student-run note-taking service, Classical Notes. Even more fortunately, I had picked up my backlog of notes that very morning, so I had a chance. I started studying, despite my drooping eyelids.

An hour later, I set the alarm for a half-hour rest-period and woke up thirty minutes later to repeat the process, which I would do all through the night. You know that recurring nightmare where you have forgotten all semester to go to a certain class? I was living it.

The next morning, I dragged my still-warm corpse to the mid-term and managed to get a D+, which was a huge relief. At least I was still in the game. I spent the last month of the quarter studying Embryology during every free second (of which there were not many) and chose to even sacrifice a solid A in Invertebrate Zoology to study for my other big final. It wasn't just my GPA that was at stake, it was my degree. I had already taken so many extra classes that I had exceeded my allotted units. If I didn't pass both classes, I wouldn't be allowed to enroll for another quarter and wouldn't be receiving my Zoology degree.

I succeeded, but only just, earning "gentleman" C's in both huge science courses, providing a somewhat ignominious end to my college career. Thirty-three years later, of course, it's all water under the bridge, and I never really did anything with that degree anyway. But I sometimes wonder what made me wake up that one night before my mid-term, when it hadn't been on my mind at all for weeks?

Maybe I'll find out someday. In the meantime, whoever or whatever you are, I owe you one.

Scalpels and Semi-Colons

It's funny how some moments in our lives stand out with remarkable clarity. I can still remember the exact location of the first time the subject of personal computers came up in our house. The year was 1986 and my mother and I were in the living room, the afternoon sun was shining, and there was a recent Time magazine with a feature story on computers siting on the Danish modern coffee table from Scandinavian Designs. Despite the glowing prognostications in the article, we were in agreement that, while personal computers might seem like a good idea, there just couldn't possibly be any practical application in our daily lives.

Up to that point, the only computers I had seen were at Scott Weiss's apartment in Santa Monica, where he used one to keep track of addresses and phone numbers, and at Harvey Susser's home, where he amazed all with a simple quiz program he had written. Beyond that, it seemed that the Luddites of 38 South Knoll Road (my mom and I) were spot-on in their predictions.

The arrival of my first PC in 1992 did little to dispel my backward thinking. It was a gift from my new father-in-law when my first wife and I moved to Coalinga, CA, where I had taken a teaching position at West Hills College. Though it was a hand-me-down, it proudly held sway in the family room of our newly-purchased home, a Symbol of Tomorrow. As I recall, it featured an early version of WordPerfect, a geography program, and a medical surgery game - none of which I knew how to use. Naturally, the whole thing ran on QDOS, Bill Gates' legendary Quick and Dirty Operating System that he had purchased from a friend for $50,000, after boldly promising to IBM that he had written his own. (BTW: If you ever come across a rerun of the documentary, Triumph of the Nerds, on TV, it's well worth watching.)

On a good day, I could turn the computer on and launch the geography program. I played around with the color schemes, looked at maps, zoomed into the city-level, and generally mucked about until the computer froze due to operator error. Then I turned it off, having completed my tech training for the day. Sometimes, I even managed to turn it off in the proper sequence, though not very often.

The word processing program was way over my head, but I did eventually make inroads on the surgery game (which was more geared to practicing physicians than newbies). At the very lowest level, you had to diagnose a patient and determine whether he or she was a suitable candidate for an appendectomy by poking at their abdomen with the mouse as they responded to your query, "Does it hurt here?" I got pretty good at that.

Then you had to prep the patient for surgery, clean the site with iodine, administer anaethesia, and make an incision at the appropriate spot, using the mouse as a scalpel. Naturally, bleeding began at this point - depending on what kind of a hack job you had done - requiring you to cauterize and ligate any bleeding vessels, again with the mouse (I think there is a reason most surgery is not done with mice). Meanwhile, vital signs needed to be monitored and the appropriate drugs and saline administered via the IV drip.

Next, you had to identify the appendix, which, by the way, is a lot harder than finding the appendix in the back of a book. You elevated the organ to the surface of the wound and then --- Actually, I couldn't tell you what happened then, since my patients invariably started circling the drain at that point, if they hadn't done so earlier in the procedure.

Unfortunately, the only way to advance was by trial and error, which seems like a fairly tragic way to learn medicine. The game didn't offer much help, other than the occasional condescending suggestion from the snarky observing physician. Helpful comments like, "Are you sure you want to make the incision there?" or "I believe that's the scrotum and not the appendix, doctor", or "Ladies and gentlemen, your patient has left the building." They say that doctors get to bury their mistakes, but mine were even easier to delete. The program did keep an annoying record of my lamentable patient stats, presumably so that someone playing a QDOS lawyer game somewhere could eventually sue the pants off me.

Not surprisingly, the computer was mostly for show. It announced to visitors that we were a young couple to be reckoned with. It signified that we were digitally aware, even if my real proficiency only extended to finally mastering the highest level of Super Mario Brothers on my Gameboy.

Fortunately, West Hills College offered a two-day training seminar on word processing for technically-challenged teachers such as myself. It's amazing what a little knowledge can do to sweep away the cobwebs of ignorance. I came home after the first session and the computer was no longer my foe. I launched WordPerfect flawlessly. We wrote things together. We selected blocks of text. We formatted paragraphs. We underlined entire sentences. We cut and pasted shamelessly. We italicized like pagans. We seductively revealed formatting marks, then we coyly hid them. Finally, we printed long sample pages and smoked cigarettes in the languid afterglow.

I was no longer a virgin. I had been introduced to the wonderful world of PC productivity. The truth be told, that expression would, at times, turn out to be a cruel oxymoron. Over the years, I would spend countless hours trying to learn how to complete mail merges, format headers and footers, or create labels that actually printed in the space allotted. But, in the end, it was all worth it. I am finally at a point where the computer is my slave. No, I take that back (the computer might be listening). My servant. No. My indulgent and beneficent helper. (Is that okay, H.A.L.?)

Yes, though the heady passions of that first steamy night of WordPerfect have been replaced by more mundane day-to-day productivity, I am not sad. The computer and I have an open marriage of sorts. I try to overlook its quirks, like crashing just before I hit the Save button. In turn, it affords me the opportunity to make new friends in distant lands, such as the helpful tech support folks in Pakistan, who work hard to help massage my shattered nerves into Nirvana. Best of all, the computer even encourages me to download all of my old data into a sexy new hard drive every few years. Try doing that with your spouse and see how far you get...

Ghosts and Actors

Where do our passions begin? Does the spark always catch the tinder and burst into flame right away? Or does it sometimes smolder for decades?

Back in 1963, Strawberry Elementary school actually had more students than it had available space. So the Multi-purpose Room, which was usually reserved for assemblies, was divided into two improvised classrooms by drawing shut its floor-to-ceiling corrugated fiberglass dividers, and Mrs. Gates' 3rd grade class took up residence in one half. The novelty of being in an unconventional space was tempered by the lack of windows, except those high up on the walls, which made it dreary during the winter.

Thankfully, when spring came around, Mrs. Gates got in the habit of opening up the big double doors in the afternoon, to let in some fresh air. That was also when our principal, Mr. Womack, began visiting us once in the afternoon, to read aloud and give us a break from our studies. I'm sure he read lots of different stories, but the one I recall most was The Wind in the Willows, which was made even better by the warm breeze wafting through the open doors. He had a rich voice and brought the book to life in a way that I have been trying to emulate ever since. When people ask me what made me want to become an actor, I tell them it was Mr. Womack's fault.

The acting spark lay dormant in me until 7th grade, when Mr. Hughes, our teacher at Martin Luther King School in Sausalito, had us perform verses from The Admiral's Ghost, by Alfred Noyes. Now, lest you think my memory is better than it really is, the only thing I remembered from the occasion was one of my lines, "That Hardy thought he knew." But, thanks to the Internet, that was all I needed. A quick search identified the poem and it was fun to read it again, 43 years later. Here is the first part, so you get the gist:

   THE ADMIRAL'S GHOST
   By Alfred Noyes

   I tell you a tale to-night
   Which a seaman told to me,
   With eyes that gleamed in the lanthorn light
   And a voice as low as the sea.

   You could almost hear the stars
   Twinkling up in the sky,
   And the old wind woke and moaned in the spars
   And the same old waves went by.

   Singing the same old song
   As ages and ages ago,
   While he froze my blood in that deep-sea night
   With the things he seemed to know.

   A bare foot pattered on deck;
   Ropes creaked; then-all grew still,
   And he pointed his finger straight in my face
   And growled, as a sea-dog will.

   'Do 'ee know who Nelson was?
   That pore little shrivelled form
   With the patch on his eye and the pinned-up sleeve
   And a soul like a North Sea storm?

   'Ask of the Devonshire men!
   They know, and they'll tell you true;
   He wasn't the pore little chawed-up chap
   That Hardy thought he knew.


There, see that last line? That's the only thing I remembered distinctly. And that was because I threw myself wholeheartedly into my preparation. I worked especially hard on my Cockney British accent (no doubt influenced by Dick Van Dyke's portrayal of the chimney sweep in Mary Poppins) and fancied myself quite the young Thespian. This was to be my Big Chance.

Unfortunately, I have always had a tendency to talk rapidly on stage, and my first time treading the boards was to be no exception. My intention was to dutifully drop my r's and announce to the world the arrival of the next Great Character Actor. When we came to my part, I began just fine. But then, like a milk truck running downhill without brakes, I picked up alarming speed. As I bumped over each line, consonants flew in every direction, never to be seen again. And when I came to the final line of my stanza, it was all I could do to blurt out "THA'ORREE'OTTEE'OO!" to the no-doubt puzzled audience. As the poem ploughed on, even I knew that I had blown it. Sadly, there is no going back, no do-overs in live theatre. That would have to stand as my first real performance.

I really didn't start taking acting seriously until my senior year in college, after another failed theatrical experience (see Pirates and Daughters, posted in August). I spent the next 3 1/2 years studying acting at the College of Marin, mostly learning that I had no idea what I was doing. I was eager, so I got lots of roles but, admittedly, stunk up the stage on many occasions. Yet there were occasional glimpses of something more that kept me going; first to the Drama Studio London program in Berkeley, and then to Hollywood.

Paradoxically, by the time I really got a handle on my acting technique, I had decided to pursue other ways of earning a subsistence living. I moved back to the Bay Area, where I started teaching drama at the College of Marin and directing plays.

These days, though acting is still my passion, I only do it for fun, which I suppose is probably the best reason to spend huge blocks of time on so ephemeral an activity. I love simply being in a theater and am perfectly happy hanging out in the chorus of a musical, or having a line or two to say. However, that doesn't mean that I don't still occasionally dream of Bigger Things.

One project I have been contemplating for several years is a staged reading of Dylan Thomas' A Child's Christmas in Wales. But, given my recent Internet-inspired glimpse into the past, perhaps I should tackle The Admiral's Ghost instead. It might be cathartic. And if you happened to have been at that landmark performance in Mr. Hughes' Class, back in the 60's, it would be your chance to actually hear what "...Hardy thought he knew." I promise.

Silly Lists and Steel Guitars

When I was in Hollywood, I definitely lived the life of the starving artist.

I had moved to L.A in 1984 to pursue a career in film and television. After several months of apartment-sitting for a former girlfriend who was off in New York directing an opera, I found my own place. It was the lower third of a triplex on Gramercy Place, just off Hollywood Boulevard and one block west of Western Avenue (the longest dead-straight street in Los Angeles).

The problem was that my rent was $400 and my only source of income was $75 a week I was earning as a janitor for the Skylight Theater, where I was performing in Romeo & Juliet. That left me $100 short every month, which was rapidly eating into my savings. Ramen noodles and spaghetti made regular appearances on my dinner table. I filled up at every cast party and I knew where the best Happy Hours were to be found in the neighborhood. In a spirit of wry self-mocking, I also posted a "Silly List" above my desk, which highlighted the things I was going to buy someday, after I hit the Big Time. It included new tennis shoes and a pair of scissors.

Fortunately, I had quite a few friends in the L.A. area and chief among them was College of Marin drama alum Steve Barker. My occasional splurge was to go with him to the Palomino Club, up on Lankershim Blvd. in North Hollywood, which was known for being country music's most important West Coast club. It featured such performers as The Flying Burrito Brothers, Dwight Yoakam, Emmylou Harris, Elvis Costello, George Thorogood and Neil Young. One legendary night, George Harrison, John Fogerty and Bob Dylan joined Jesse Ed Davis and Taj Mahal onstage. But once a month, they also held a Saturday night amateur talent contest and that's when I got to hear Steve sing.

Now, Steve is, and was, a serious singer. He used to do a really good Elvis impersonation in high school and played leads in musicals such as Oklahoma! and Once Upon a Mattress. So he went to the Palomino to earn some hard cash and maybe a chance at bigger fame. He knew who the competition was and planned out his selections carefully. I went along for the music, the conversation, to drink a beer or two, and maybe catch regular Jose Jimenez sing "Feliz Navidad" (the only song he seemed to know) in his unique voice.

One month, Steve got the idea that I should enter the contest. Not being a Real Singer, the idea terrified me, but with his help I worked up a fair rendition of "Jambalaya," by Hank Williams. Steve coached me on how to work with the band, use the microphone and what to expect up on stage.

When the chosen night came, we arrived early for sign-ups, and waited. After what seemed like hours, the grey-haired emcee, Cliffie Stone, called me up. I gave my music to the house band, the Palomino Riders, and breathed deeply. Cliffie took the mike and announced, "Listen up, everyone! Next, we have here a young man who is going to sing an actual country and western song!" The only reason that was a notable was that most of the entertainers on talent night sang rock and roll or blues.

I walked up to the mike and the Riders began to play my intro - that I had never heard before! My first thought was: Damn it sure sounds a lot different when they play it. I'm screwed! I felt the blood rush from my face and settle in the region of my feet. Then I heard laughter and finally caught on: they were playing the intro to Johnny Cash's "Folsom Prison Blues" in response to Cliffie's tongue-in-cheek intro. Apparently, everyone else in the room caught the joke faster than I did. Then the band began to play my intro and I was off and running.

What can I say? Steve had prepared me well. The lyrics were there, I gave good twang, and I could see some couples get up to dance in the darkened bar beyond the stage lights. I got to watch the band play during the song's bridge, which was so cool from my new vantage point. Hell, I was on stage at the Palomino! I even yelled "One more time!" to the steel guitar player as I reached the final chorus, just the way Steve had taught me. I made my way back through the applause to our table and a hero's welcome. Then we grabbed the tape recording of my act and went outside to Steve's Eddie Bauer Ford Bronco and listened to my song on his tape deck. I was surprised to discover that I didn't totally suck!

We went back in, had a couple of more beers and lined up on stage for the crowd judging. I recall that Steve won second place, which was awesome. Of course, I didn't expect to end up in the money, but that didn't matter one bit. I had gone so far out of my comfort zone that I was on Cloud Nine. And I had my good friend's prodding and encouragement to thank for it.

Today is Steve's 50th birthday. It's been 25 years since I sang at the Palomino, which closed down in 1995 after both owners died. But I can truthfully say that I once sang on the very same stage as most of the biggest stars of country and rock music - including Steve Barker. Yahoo! Thanks, Buddy!

Sierra Sue and The Scoutmaster

I had dinner with my 90 year-old father, Bill Clark, Saturday night at the Aegis retirement home in Corte Madera, where he lives now. I wheeled him out of Life's Neighborhood (the unit where they provide a higher level of supervision and memory assistance than in the main living area) and we joined his "wife," Edna Engel, and three of her lady friends at a large table. Though he now has some difficulty hearing and holding the thread of a conversation, we had a nice time. Eventually, the conversation came around to what I was up to at the moment. When the ladies heard that I was rehearsing a musical, several of them said that they missed my dad's singing during breakfast. I do, too.

My father was always singing. He had a lovely baritone voice and knew all his college songs, campfire songs from the Boy Scouts, and hits from the 1940s and before. My favorite was "It's Been a Long, Long Time," which he said was the song he first heard when he got off the boat returning from spending the end of World War II serving in Iceland.

But there is one song that he seemed to have sung the most often, that I both loved and hated. It was called "Sierra Sue." Chances are you've never heard of it. Or, if you happen to have been a Boy Scout in Strawberry Troop 33 from about 1965 to 1975, you probably can't get it out of your head. For the record, here's how it goes:

    Sierra Sue, I'm sad and lonely,
    The rocks and rills are lonely, too.
    Sierra Sue, I want you only,
    No one but you, Sierra Sue.

    The roses weep, their tears are falling,
    The gentle doves no longer coo.
    Oh, can't you hear my sad heart calling,
    Calling for you, Sierra Sue.

Joseph Buell Carey wrote those lyrics in 1916. I'm not sure where my father learned them, but I do know that Bing Crosby, Glenn Miller, Gene Krupa and Ted Weems all recorded versions in 1940, and Gene Autry's voice was featured in the film of the same name in 1941.

So, what's not to like? Sentimental story, lilting tune, easy to sing. The reason I have such mixed feelings about "Sierra Sue" is that on every single morning of every single day on every single Scout camping trip for more than ten years we were awakened at 7 am or earlier by my father singing that damn song.

Granted, it certainly was a lot better than a loud bugle call or rude banging on pots with a wooden spoon, but it always meant an end to our youthful slumbers. It also was an in-your-face reminder that grown-ups had this mysterious ability to rise up earlier than we teenagers, greeting the world all "bright-eyed and bushy-tailed," as my father used to say. Meanwhile, the rest of us slowly emerged from our sleeping bag cocoons like so-many reluctant moths.

Of course, now that I am the age my father was back-then, I know his early rising had nothing to do with any form of adult super-power. After so many years of living, my father just felt "nature's call" earlier than we did. Once up, it was simply practical to get a jump on the morning's work.

These days, I tend to be an early-riser, too, though I am decidedly less musical about it. And on those occasions when I do need to be out and about before the sun is up, getting out of bed is no problem.

To me, rising before dawn heralds the beginning of something special. I may be traveling a great distance, going skiing for the day with my daughter, heading to the start of an epic all-day bike ride, or driving to the airport to catch a flight to someplace interesting. I like the silence when I walk outside, the mostly deserted streets, and the feeling that "the game is afoot," as Sherlock Holmes used to say. 

As fate would have it, my daughter never showed any interest in Girl Scouts, so I didn't get to carry on my father's early morning camp tradition. Instead, I honored it by adding "Sierra Sue" to her bedtime song repertoire very early on.

So, on Saturday night, when I discovered that most of my dinner companions had never heard of "Sierra Sue," I starting singing it for them. Then my dad joined in, and his voice was stronger than it had been in some time. He didn't remember all of the words, but the smile on his face lifted me back to my Scouting days, when his voice used to ring out clear and strong in the still morning air.

Backhoes and Boulders

I've attended a lot of funerals, memorial services and the oddly-named "celebrations of life" recently. That's just one of the downsides to growing older. But I had never been to an actual burial. That is, before last year.

The sad occasion was the passing of my brother-in-law, Peter Scheideman, at the age of 52. To make a long story short, he took his own life to avoid the debilitating decline brought on by his advancing multiple sclerosis. I've read that suicide is actually the leading cause of death from MS, as people see their ability to function slowly slip away and decide to cut short the indignity of the disease's final stages, while they are still able to act by themselves.

In his will, Peter asked to be buried in Eureka, Nevada, a tiny mining town on Highway 50, some 100 miles due south from where he had once tamed the Wild West at the XJ Ranch, near Elko. So that is how we found ourselves at the Owl Club Casino, the only restaurant in town, one Sunday morning in June 2009. Our group that morning included my brother, John; my sister and Peter's wife, Kathy, and their children, Courtney, Gus and Peter. We ordered some food and coffee and started catching up on events.



More mourners arrived, including Peter's mother, Carol, and her husband; Peter's sister, Jill, and brother, Bob; and close friends, Chad and Will Childers, along with their mother, Leslie. Meanwhile, outside the weather turned ominous. Brief, but intense thunder showers swept up Highway 50, which was the main street through town.

Just then, the cafe door swung open. A unidentified man, obviously looking for someone, stood on the threshhold and scanned the dark interior, just like a gunslinger in an old cowboy movie. My sister recognized him and read his expression perfectly. "All right, Mike, what is it now?" It turned out that Mike was the funeral director, who had driven the hearse down from Elko. How Kathy knew that something was amiss, I don't know, but Peter's response quickly confirmed her suspicions. "We have a problem," he said, sounding an awful lot like the Apollo 13 astronauts, "We don't have a hole dug. They're trying right now to find the guy who runs the backhoe. But, since it's the weekend, they're not sure where he is." After a short discussion, we were told to sit tight and he would let us know.

After an hour or so, we got the news that the backhoe operator had been located and we could proceed to the graveyard. We piled into our cars and, after a couple of wrong turns, found the correct road that led past the city corporation yard to the aptly and simply named Cemetery Hill. As we approached, another brief storm hit and we saw a big bolt of lightning hit a tree in the distance. Nervous laughter broke the somber mood.


The old part of the Eureka cemetery.

 The Eureka cemetery is divided into two sections. The older one has orderly rows of gravestones, crosses and memorials, many dating back to the beginning of the 19th century. The newer part consists of a broad hillside studded with short pines and facing the Diamond Mountains. Apparently, Peter liked them even more than the Ruby Mountains that rose above his and Kathy's former ranch. Grave sites are distributed about, seemingly at random, and his final resting spot was indicated simply by an outline where someone had dragged a foot to show the desired orientation. As we stood there, the backhoe man lumbered up the hill in his machine and Mike suggested we wait by the cars while the man went about his work.

We congregated around the hearse, as the sounds of digging through the rocky soil could be heard from nearby. Mike strolled over and Kathy asked how long it would take. His response was not very encouraging, "Could be only an hour, though one time it took three days to dig through all the rocks." Even as he spoke, the backhoe clanged repeatedly off a large stone and we wondered which it would be.

Had the grave been ready when we arrived, we all would probably have been on our way home by now, which would have been a shame. Instead, we got out a few camp chairs and spent the next hour and a half sharing stories about Peter. He had been, in turns, brave, generous, unforgiving, adventurous, a wonderful father, loving husband, sadly desperate in the face of financial hardship, and a visionary. We all agreed that, if not for his desire to relive the Rough-Rider era of Teddy Roosevelt, most of us would never have been exposed to the stark beauty and history of eastern Nevada, which even now unfolded before us from our lofty vantage point.

I also learned a lot more about his children, especially Gus and Peter, whom I hadn't seen in years and who had inherited many of their father's best qualities. We threw rocks at tin cans and wandered about looking for arrowheads - something I used to love to do at the XJ Ranch. Miraculously, I found a Clovis point that I decided to dedicate to Peter's grave. By the time the hole was finished, we were no longer strangers at a funeral.

The short walk to the gravesite brought new emotions. Kathy and Courtney, Peter's only daughter, were both wary of the finality of the occasion, even though he was truly dead and gone. The simple pine casket (remarkably close to the plain wooden box he had requested) was beside the grave, and four of us took hold of the two straps and lowered it down. Then, since there was no minister, we all said our personal farewells to Peter. Bob put a coffee can from the family roasting business into the grave, and others simply spoke their piece. When my turn came, I thanked Peter for his hospitality at the XJ and tossed my arrowhead atop the coffin.

When all had been said, we took turns tossing a bit of earth into the grave and that was when Courtney lost it. As long as her father's body had been nearby in the hearse, she had been okay, but the finality of his actually being put in the ground had been too much. Fortunately, she had her mother to console her, which had the added benefit of distracting Kathy from the moment as well.

Now that we had shared so much, everyone was reluctant to part. So we made our way back down to the Owl Club, where we had a late lunch/early dinner. Peter's mother had brought along scores of pictures of Peter and his family, and we passed those around the long table as we continued to reminisce. Most notable were the photos of Peter skiing with his children, playing with his dogs, fishing, or watching over his herd of bison at the XJ. Those smiling, confident images contrasted greatly with more recent ones, where he seemed to be carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders.

In the end, that may be the greatest tragedy. Peter had felt his responsibility as family provider so keenly that it obscured the rest of his world: his family's unconditional love and the things in his life that he enjoyed so much. He saw no way out except at the end of a gun barrel. I can't imagine what he suffered, both mentally and physically, but it seemed such an unsatisfying end to an otherwise very satisfactory life.

But thank you, Peter, for being the kind of person who could inspire so many people to make the long journey to share a thoroughly remarkable afternoon on a remote hilltop in the shadow of the Diamond Mountains. You are missed.

Clouds and Cotton

I am not a big Joni Mitchell fan, especially after her diatribe against fellow folk musician Bob Dylan in her recent Los Angeles Times interview, but I do especially like her song, Both Sides Now, the one where she sings about clouds.

     "Bows and flows of angels hair
     And ice cream castles in the air
     And feathered canyons everywhere
     I've looked at clouds that way."

Those lyrics came to mind this morning as I set out on my bike commute from Novato to San Rafael. As I left our driveway and turned onto Washington Street, I looked up to see the sky filled with evenly-spaced cotton balls, all glowingly lit, but each with that singular dark outline you only get at sunrise or sunset. The sight gave me an ear-to-ear grin.

I think that the sky, in its many colors and forms, is one of this physical world's greatest gifts. To me, it represents change, hope, the limits of our existence, and our window into the infinite. The photographer in me appreciates the angular light when the sun peeks under lowering storm clouds, just as it sets. But I also like every other variation in the heavens. My father, who was also a photographer back in his heyday, used to point out the changing sky as we rode in the family car. I have done the same with my daughter from an early age, and she now appreciates the nuances of a yellow-green sunset and the sudden appearance "sun dogs" in the icy winter air. She loves a cloudy day.

When she was little, only four or five, she wanted desperately to go up into a cloud to see what it was like. She had seen lofty cumulous formations from her airplane window as we flew to her grandparents home in Idaho and I imagine she thought they would have the consistency of cotton candy. At times, I was tempted to drive her up to the high hills when low cloud cover obscured their peaks, but I hesitated because I was torn between reality and fantasy. Fortunately, fantasy won out. As the song says, "It's cloud's illusions I recall."

Last summer, while driving back from the funeral of my brother-in-law, Peter Scheideman, I was treated to a sky show that I'll never forget. The day had been an unusual one, the events of which I will share at another time. But as I drove away from the sadness of saying a final good-bye to Peter, dwelling on thoughts of death and impermanence, the sky seemed to have other ideas.

I left Eureka in eastern Nevada at about 5:30 pm, traveling west on US 50 (the "Loneliest Road in America"). But the long miles ahead became an afterthought as I was captivated by the weather. It seemed that every ten or fifteen minutes the sky transformed itself. There were sun showers, lightning storms, rainbows galore, moving curtains of misting rain, low light gilding the hills, brief intense downpours, and bright sunshine lighting up towering thunder clouds set against a deepening blue sky. I snapped dozens of mental postcard pictures as I made my way west towards Reno, wishing that I could have recorded it all.

As the miles ticked by, I began to feel that I was experiencing a sermon delivered through the medium of light and water and air. In my mind, it was saying, "You are not in charge here. You never have been. Life. Death. Those are only words chosen by you to try and make sense of what you can't possibly understand. Here's what we want you to do: Just sit back and enjoy the show." That sounded like good advice at the time, and it still does.

Sideburns and Rope Burns

I looked in the mirror this morning and saw my brother, John. Not in the metaphysical way of siblings sharing thoughts, or in the way I occasionally see my father peeking out from beneath my brow as I grow older and greyer. No, this weekend I came across an old photo of John in his rock climbing gear and he was sporting long sideburns very similar to the ones I am now growing out for our production of Pirates of Penzance.

In the photo from 1970, John is standing jauntily with a climbing rope over his shoulder, wearing a purple shirt, swashbuckling hat, bell-bottom pants and the afore-mentioned sideburns. He and my dad had taken up rock climbing while on a family vacation to the Grand Tetons in August 1967. They both enrolled in a climbing school and had been thoroughly hooked.

From that point on, our house was filled with gear - pitons of all sizes, hammers, carabiners, nuts, bongs (not the kind you're thinking of, more like cowbell-sized anchors), RURPs (Realization of Ultimate Reality Piton, named because they were for the tiniest of cracks, having a blade only about an inch long and 1/4 inch deep), jumar ascenders, harnesses, and miles of parti-colored climbing rope. There were even anchors on our roofline, put there by my dad to work on ascending techniques while hanging from our eaves. My brother and father's home-away-from-home became Camp 4 in the Yosemite Valley, which had been taken over by the Bohemian climbing community. It was only natural that I would be eventually be introduced to the sport, too.

My first climbing experiences were with the Boy Scouts. We occasionally got to practice rappelling down large boulders during weekend camping trips and also from wooden platforms at Scout-a-Rama expositions. I was pretty good at that. Then we went on to learn about actual climbing up on Mount Tamalpais, which has several nice routes that are easily accessible from the path that leads around the East Peak from the uppermost parking lot. One of those was the infamous "overhang," which required you to crawl up a short wall and then out across a ceiling like a human fly. My brother was quite adept at this difficult maneuver and it was both scary and amazing to see him make the final moves that took him out up over the edge.

My first climbs were on much easier routes. Still, despite being secured by "top ropes," it could be very nerve-wracking, especially when you reached a tricky spot and didn't know where or how to make the next move. I can still recall the shaking legs and arms that signalled both physical and mental fatigue. There was also one experience that permanently changed the way I felt about climbing.

We had gone up Mt. Tam one afternoon with a bunch of Scouts that included the Gallagher twins, Steven and Scott, who were my age. The routine we practiced was that the person on top, or belayer, first wrapped a length of webbing around his waist and secured that with a ring bend and two half-hitches. Then he would "clip in" via a couple of carabiners and a short piece of webbing to an anchor, which could be a piton driven into the rock, a permanent bolt attached to the rock face, or by some other means. Once tied in, the belayer would hold on to one end of the climbing rope and toss the rest of the coil off the cliff while yelling "rope!" (Getting hit by a length of tossed rope can sting pretty bad.)

As the climber below tied himself onto the rope with a bowline knot and half hitch, the belayer would take his position, bracing his feet against something solid and feeding the rope around his waist. A call of "on belay!" from above and "climbing!" from below signaled the start. Intermittent shouts of "slack!" or "tension!" kept the belayer tuned into the needs of the climber as he sped up easier sections, or struggled to negotiate tough moves.

We took turns practicing up a pitch that was probably only a hundred feet high. But as we used to say, a fall from 50 feet can kill you just as easily as one from 500. I climbed up the route as Steven belayed. Then, when I got to the top, I belayed Scott as he climbed. Everything went fine until he got to the top and gave the final command of "off belay," which didn't need to be shouted because he was standing next to me and simply telling me that he was unroping. I stood from my belay position and turned to unclip from my anchor, only to discover that I had never clipped in. A chill ran down my spine. Sure, I could probably have held a fall with just the way my feet were braced and the friction of the climbing rope on the rock. But then a vision of Scott falling and launching me into a headfirst flight off the cliff entered my brain, where it has stuck till this day. Needless to say, that was an error that I never repeated. Unfortunately, it also shaded my appreciation for the sport.

Some months later, I found myself belaying the twins' older brother, Michael, up a more difficult route when he fell hard. I was pulled from my braced belay position and fought to bring him to a quick stop. I did, but at the cost of some nasty rope burns on my palms as the woven nylon line zipped through my hands. They hurt like hell afterward and the only relief I could find on the ride down the mountain was to place them on the cool car windows. Had I not been clipped in that time, things might have ended up much worse. Luck? Guardian Angel? I'll take either.

Despite numerous attempts, some pleasurable, some scary, climbing never caught on with me. I think the main reason is that it revealed my fear of heights. I can keep it under control when I am being active, but simply sitting on a ledge eating lunch during a climb used to turn my stomach, despite being fully secured to anchors.

It's sometimes disconcerting to realize how thin the veil can be between this world and the next. A missed belaying anchor, a moment's inattention on a twisty mountain road, a fall in a kitchen, and that's it. Then again, people can overcome incredible adversity at other times, such as earthquake victims who are rescued after being buried alive for days.

So which is it to be? I guess we'll never know until the time comes. So, pardon me if I pause to check the tires on my road bike for cuts, give you a bad time if you're not wearing safety glasses while building theater sets, or if insist that my daughter learn how to handle a car really well before she gets that coveted license. I've stood on the edge of the cliff, looking down and imagining what might have easily been - and I don't want to go into the Great Beyond without a fight.

Bug Juice and Pancakes

As part of Customer Service Appreciation Week at my current job, the powers-that-be are rewarding us reps with little thank you's each morning. Yesterday, we got gourmet coffee and a pastry for breakfast. Today we received a single-serving pack of Crystal Light powdered drink mix, attached to a postcard featuring the head of the division on the fake postage stamp. Yes, it was pretty underwhelming. But, as I mixed up my raspberry-flavored packet with cold water from the Alhambra jug and took my first sip, I got an unexpected second gift - an express ticket to a recurring memory from my youth.

On our many Cub Scout and Boy Scout outings, one of the constants was Wyler's drink mix, or as we liked to call it, "Bug Juice," a name that I understand is common lingo in the military. Despite what you might think, that name actually made it more appealing to our adolescent boy brains. For breakfast we would usually drink Tang (it went to the moon!). But for lunch, supper and everything in between, it had to be Wyler's.

I don't think I ever saw Wyler's for sale in the grocery store. The only place we had it was in the Scouts. I can only assume that our troop had thousands of cases of it stored in some warehouse. And, since this was before the era of sell-by dates, it very likely had been there for some while. It wouldn't surprise me to learn that the Wyler Company had gone out of business before the Spanish American War (it hasn't).

We could mix up a batch of Bug Juice in our sleep. That task was usually assigned to the least competent member of the patrol, since it was pretty hard to screw up. You simply took the biggest aluminum cooking pot we carried, washed it out perfunctorily, and mixed the packet according to instructions. Then your stirred it thoroughly with the ladle that had been used to serve soup the night before (and that usually hadn't been cleaned too thoroughly).

Of course, Wyler's came in a variety of artificial flavors (I think the only thing not artificial in it was the loads of sugar). The lemonade variety was the reason it was called Bug Juice, but we also drank it in fruit punch (my favorite), strawberry (my least favorite), and grape. The flavors encouraged us to stay hydrated and also improved the palatability of water that was tepid or that came out of rusty old campground spigots.

That's not to say we didn't like it; we did, and drank gallons and gallons of the stuff. I can still recall the sound of the ladle scraping the bottom of the pot and picture scooping out the dregs, complete with whatever dirt had fallen in, one of the facts of eating outdoors. You simply would let the leaves and other detritus settle to the bottom of your Sierra Cup, like so many tea leaves.

There were times when Wyler's was elevated to a level of taste certainly on a par with the finest of wines, and that would be in the High Sierras. In the era before the widespread infestation of Giardia (a nasty intestinal parasite), you could simply scoop water out of any stream or larger lake and drink it, pure and unfiltered. As far as we were concerned, there was nothing better than Wyler's mixed with ice-cold water from a lake that had only recently thawed. It might give you a headache, but it sure was good.

There was one time, I recall, when our Wyler's was put to rather unusual use. I was just a Cub Scout at the time, though a Webelo, which meant that I had almost achieved Boy Scout-hood, sort of Scouting bar mitzvah. Along with the other Webelos of Cub Scout Pack 33, we were invited to tag along with the big boys of Troop 33 on a weekend camping trip.

I was assigned to the patrol of my older brother, John, and we set up our tents in the Laurel Dell campsite, just down the trail from Rock Springs on Mount Tamalpais. On Saturday, we all went on hikes with our adopted patrols and learned woodsy lore. We also learned that camping with the older Boy Scouts was quite a bit different than we were used to. They swore a lot more, used knives and axes in a rather cavalier fashion, and demonstrated grooming habits that were questionable even by our standards.

My brother, in particular, was famous for arriving at a campsite in his newly laundered uniform, then somehow - only minutes later - reappearing covered in dirt. My father used to jokingly claim that John rolled in the campfire ashes. I think he just threw himself whole-heartedly into whatever needed to be done, with little disregard for his attire. (Now that I think about it, he used to do the same thing while working on his ill-fated Alfa Romeo. He had been given a number of blue button-down dress shirts from a family friend that he routinely wore while bleeding brakes and dismantling transmissions.)

Anyway, we Webelos were having a grand time and were even treated to a pancake breakfast on Sunday morning. Unfortunately, the milk that was to be used for the pancakes had run out the night before. But my brother, who even back then had the makings of a gourmet cook, barely skipped a beat in his preparations. After a brief conference with his other patrol members, breakfast proceeded as planned. The only change to the menu was that grape Wyler's had now taken the place of milk in the pancake batter.

Our Cub Scout eyes widened as purple pancakes were stacked on our plates. And, though they probably didn't need any extra sugar, we doused them heavily with syrup. Were they any good? Who cares? They were purple, they were pancakes, and they would live in my memory as probably the most unusual thing I ever ate in the Scouts.

Snow Caves and Bears

Every time I find myself sitting in my car at a busy intersection, waiting for an opening in the non-stop traffic that never seems to appear, I try to remember all the times in the past when I have felt that same way. Then, I tell myself, since I'm obviously not still wherever I was back then, a gap will open up this time as well. It's good to remind ourselves occasionally that "this, too shall pass." One of those times occurred while on a snow camping trip with our Boy Scout troop.

Now we were old hands at camping in Strawberry Troop 33. There was some sort of weekend outing every month, with a 10-day or two-week extended trip each summer. We camped in the Sierras, on the beach, in the pouring rain at Camp Tamarancho, and even in the snow.

Fortunately, we had the ideal spot for snow camping at Granlibakken, a ski resort just outside of Tahoe City. Rusty, the owner, had no problem if we set up camp near the old practice ski jumping hill (left over from the Squaw Valley Olympics in 1960). He also didn't mind if we cut some green boughs off his fir trees to use as insulation beneath our tents.

Camping in the snow was usually pretty uneventful. As long as you brought enough warm clothes, you would be okay. However, some Scouts, despite detailed packing instructions, would still manage to screw up. One fellow, Bobbie P., when provided with a thin flannel liner intended to provide an extra bit of warmth to his sleeping bag, thought that the liner was all he was supposed to bring. Fortunately, his generous physique provided its own insulation. That same trip, he also managed to have rented two left ski boots back in Mill Valley. Again, he was fortunate to be able to get the required (and infinitely more practical) left-right pair at the resort's ski shop.

But our biggest challenge came in February 1970, when I was 14. The snowfall had been unusually heavy that winter, so our adult Scout leaders decided we should try our hand at sleeping in actual snow caves. I still like to watch survival shows, such as Man vs. Wild with Bear Grylls, so you can imagine how exciting it was back then to contemplate actually carving a shelter out of snow and ice.

We arrived at Granlibakken in the early afternoon, donned our skis and backpacks, and trudged the half-mile or so up the gentle slope to our campsite. The accumulated snow was impressive, laying heavily on the tree boughs and forming deep troughs around their trunks. My patrol, the Kodiak Bears, which consisted of Steven Gallagher, John Wuoltee, Pat Norton, Mark Linker and myself, chose a deep drift set against a low hillock and started digging.

It was surprisingly vigorous work, so we took turns. One person would dig, as the others shoveled away the snow that was being excavated. The entrance was barely wider than our shoulders, all the better to keep the heat in. But inside, the cave opened up into two substantial chambers, each intended to fit a couple of scouts. The fifth member of our patrol would sleep just inside the entryway. We had to dig around the occasional buried tree branch, but after a couple of hours, it was done. We used a ski pole to poke a vent hole in the roof and placed a thick layer of boughs on the floor, with plastic drop cloths on top to keep our sleeping bags from getting covered in pitch. There were even little carved shelves to hold our battery lanterns and knick-knacks. We had done a pretty fine job and looked forward to trying it out.

Making a fire from slightly damp wood was a piece of cake for a veteran patrol such as ours. We soon had dinner going as we struggled to keep warm against the quickly dropping temperature. We ate around the fire, sitting on Ensolite sleeping pads to insulate our backsides from the snow. Dessert was followed by hot cocoa and then we turned in for the night.

Getting settled in our snow cave was an interesting proposition, with the five of us trying to get undressed in our sleeping bags simultaneously, but we managed. The last step was to stuff the next day's set of clothing into the foot of our bags to keep it warm. Once we got settled, we didn't want to turn off our lanterns, which reflected nicely off our handsome snow ceiling. We told dirty jokes, played cards and otherwise amused ourselves from about 8 till 10 pm, when we finally drifted off to sleep, as snug as five Kodiak bears in their den.

Until you've had a chance to sleep in a snow cave, it's hard to imagine how warm it can get. Not toasty warm, but definitely many degrees above freezing. I awoke in the middle of the night to a persistent drip, which was coming from the ceiling, though I couldn't see exactly where in the pitch black of the cave. And not just one drip, several. My sleeping bag was getting wet, but I just repositioned myself, covered my head and went back to sleep.

A few hours later - I couldn't tell how many - I awoke again. It wasn't that I was cold; I was drenched. Had we known better (or been able to see into the future, where Bear would point out this very salient detail on his show), we would have made the roof of our cave much smoother; instead, every small peak carved by the snow shovel dripped snow-melt like so many stalactites. There were whispered grumbles from the few of us who were awake.

While we weren't in danger of hypothermia, there was a more dire effect the dripping snow was having on our bodies - we had to pee, badly. Unfortunately, the mouth of the cave was blocked by John Wuoltee, who was somehow managing to sleep like a champ, unaffected by the impromptu sprinkler system that had gone off in our cozy little home.

We discussed crawling over him, but those thoughts were tempered by the realization that we would then have to go out into the freezing night in our damp clothes. Warmth somehow trumped incontinence and we suffered through the wee (no pun intended) hours of the morning, trying not to think of the insistent drip-drip-drip that tormented our bulging bladders.

Gratefully, the dawn eventually made its reluctant appearance up our little valley. As soon as the sunlight reached the entrance to our cave, we burst forth like so many pups from a pregnant sled dog. We dragged our soaked sleeping bags outside and fumbled through our backpacks for our second set of spare clothes. Yes, they were freezing, but at least they were dry. We changed right there, standing barefoot and naked on our insulating pads, our breath coming out in billowing clouds. We pulled up frozen zippers with numb fingers and crammed our feet into leather boots that had frozen overnight into grotesque shapes. Then we all wandered off to write our names in the snow and felt much, much better.

I don't think the Kodiaks ever made a campfire with such urgency. Minutes later, it was roaring and we laughed heartily over our ordeal as we thawed out. Despite how time had seemed to crawl as we lay shivering in our sodden cave, awaiting the dawn that never seemed to come; it finally did, and we now found our adventure endlessly amusing.

I suppose that's the way it is with most things in life. You can either choose to wear your trials as albatrosses around your neck, or as badges of honor that commemorate where you've been. Given a choice, I prefer the latter. It's funny what valuable life lessons can be learned while spending the night in a dripping snow cave. That, and always take the time to make the ceiling as smooth as you possibly can.

Rackets and Racquets

As a young girl growing up in Bolivia, my mother set early goals for what she wished to accomplish in life: She wanted to learn to drive a car and to smoke cigarettes. Remarkably, she managed to accomplish both in her long lifetime, and a bit more besides.

She was born Patricia Ann Magowan, in Chuquicamata, Chile on November 7, 1920. (I remember seeing those initials on an old suitcase that we kept in the basement.) At the time, her parents, Wilhelmina and William, lived in La Paz, Bolivia, where he was serving as that country's Treasurer. But her mother's doctors felt that the nearly 12 thousand foot elevation in La Paz would make labor too difficult, so my grandmother took the long train down to the coast to give birth to my mom. 


William and Wilhemina Magowan



Over the years I have contemplated trying to take advantage of my "Latino" heritage on college and job applications, but the truth is that my grandmother's family came from Germany, and my grandfather's from Northern Ireland. He had initially traveled to South America as an accountant for an American copper-mining company in Chile.

Then, in 1920, my grandfather joined a group of businessmen who backed a Bolivian coup led by Bautista Saavedra Mallea, which resulted in him moving to La Paz to assume the role of state Treasurer, presumably based on his bookkeeping skills. (As remarkable as this achievement was, it might be noted that Bolivia has a long history of coups d'etat, experiencing 193 of them since it achieved independence in 1825.)

 

     Jimmy Doolitle prior to

     World War II.


 

My mother lived in a government house and attended a private Catholic school in La Paz. Stories from those years are few, but two are notable. The first took place in April 1926. Jimmy Doolittle, the first pilot to fly coast-to-coast across the U.S. and recipient of two Distinguished Service Crosses, visited La Paz on a trip to perform demonstration flights in South America. He took my grandmother up for a thrilling ride in his P-6 Hawk, an open-cockpit fighter bi-plane employed by the U.S. Army Air Corps. My mother recounted the story often.




The second event clearly demonstrates my grandmother's mettle (and shows where my mother got some of her feistiness). It took place in 1925 during a state visit of the Prince of Wales, Edward VIII, to honor Bolivia's Centennial. Apparently, through an impressive lack of good sense on the part of the person in charge of protocol, the ladies were not invited to the state dinner, which was to be men-only. Furious, Wilhelmina, who had gotten suitable dressed up to meet the handsome darling of the British Royal family, went up to her room and fumed.



  Medallion commemorating Edward VIII's

  visit to Argentina in 1925



Following dinner, the young 31 year-old Edward suggested that it might be nice to invite the ladies to share post-prandial cigars and cognac. They were quickly sent for, but my grandmother stood her ground and refused, along with several others. She thus missed out on meeting the future King of England, who would one day abdicate his throne after only 11 months to wed Wallis Simpson, a twice-divorced American. According to my mother, her mother said if she wasn't good enough to eat dinner with the Prince of Wales, then she wouldn't smoke cigars with him either.

In addition to being an excellent student, my mother also became a sports fanatic early on. She learned golf from her father and would often take the train with him to the La Paz Golf Club, the highest in the world at 10,800 feet. On the way, she would sit in his lap as he played poker with the other passengers. Occasionally, they would give her coins. When she got to the club house, she would wait until they teed off, then would go into the men's locker room and go through their pockets for more change. Quite the entrepreneur. (And remarkably forthright as well, to have shared that information later in life.) Following her Artful Dodger activities, she would go out and hit balls on the driving range and practice her putting.

She also played tennis, again encouraged by her father. As she progressed, she was eager to graduate to a adult-sized equipment. Finally, in anticipation of her ninth birthday, her mother took her down to the only sporting goods shop in La Paz, where they purchased the serious tennis racquet that she had been eyeing.

That night, when her father came home from work, she rushed to the door to show him her purchase. Uncharacteristically, he avoided eye contact with his oldest daughter and turned to her mother instead. All he said glumly was that it had to go back to the store.

My mother was crushed and retreated to her room, puzzled at the sudden turn of events. For her, it was a very sad day. But for her father - who foresaw his family's pending financial crisis and return to the States within the year - and for millions of others around the globe - the day was even sadder. Because the date was October 29, 1929, and the New York Stock Market had just crashed.