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| With St. Francis and Labyrinth, FoolsDay, 2011 |
I was born the year before WWII ended, and have since led what many people seem to consider a varied and colorful life.
I can’t remember when friends
first started telling me that I should write my memoirs, but in 2015, I began
posting brief chapters of reminiscence each week as “Throwback Thursday” essays
on Facebook.
Before long, readers started
telling me that I should compile these essays into a book. While a nice idea,
this was impractical because of the sheer number of photos, many in color,
involved in over 200 (and counting) essays.
I next considered a website,
but upon inquiry, discovered that setting one up would be a very expensive
proposition, and I’d still have to do most of the work anyway.
Since
I’ve long been familiar
with the elements of the free online tool Blogger™, I decided to turn
the memoir essays into linked sections, each containing
about 20-30 stories. (Apologies for any disparity in type size and/or
eccentricities in spacing as a result of importing material from other
sources)
These tales are not in any
kind of autobiographical order. Many of them are about fascinating people I’ve
known, including members of my family. Some are based on my own artwork. They're all just the tiniest bit outrageous.
Welcome to my past.
(Photo by Laura Goldman)
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TABLE OF CONTENTS:
COLOR KEY:
Red = Tales of the 1960s and 1970s/San Francisco Stories
Pink = Encounters with Remarkable people
Green = Family and Personal Stories
Blue = Sonoma County Stories/Pennsylvania Stories
Black = Renaissance and Dickens Fair(e)s and Other Theater
Purple = Interlocken Center fro Experiential Education Stories
Orange = Artwork and Art-Related stories
1. NO M.A. FOR YOU…
2. CLARE HELPS AMIE WITH HER OUTFIT
3. I AM PUSSY; HEAR ME THUNDER, or, ANYBODY WANNA BROWNIE?
4. PETE’S LULLABY
5. GOT A MATCH?
6. PANTHERINA RIDES AGAIN
7. THE HORSE YEARS
8. WOL AND THE CAN OF NOT-COOKIES
9. A POND OF ONE’S OWN
10. THE SPLINTER; A FAMILY HEIRLOOM
11. LOREN WASHBURN ETCHING OF MAD MAUDLEN
12. JOCKS, or, A FAMILY TRADITION
13. NAMING THE CAT
14. A TOUCH OF SPRING
15. NOT EVERYBODY GETS TO BE A GIANT CHICKEN AT CHRISTMASTIME
16. UNCLE DAVID, or, THE WONDERFUL WIZARD OF MAIN STREET
17. DISTANT BATTLES, or, THE GREAT-GRANDFATHERS GO TO WAR
18. POSING FOR SCHONEBERG
19. MEETING (OMG) JOHN AND GEORGE
20. 40-ODD (AND I DO MEAN ODD) YEARS AND (HOW MANY) DEGREES OF PHOTOGRAPHIC SEPARATION?
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1. THROWBACK THURSDAY: San Francisco, California, June 1969. Things Found Between the Pages of Old Books #3
NO M.A. FOR YOU!
…was the message contained in the letter (below) from the dean of the graduate division at San Francisco State College.
Just to put things into perspective, this was just before SFSC re-invented itself as San Francisco State University, and following almost three years of student strikes, anti-war, curriculum-change and free-speech demonstrations, unrest, arrests, shutdowns, sit-ins, teach-ins, and occasional mobs of helmeted police storm-trooping across the campus.
I was somehow ignorant of most of this when I chose SFS from half a continent away because of its highly regarded English and creative writing programs.
Culture-shocked, out of my element, and essentially (and, again, perhaps ignorantly) unpolitical, I did my time as a graduate assistant, dodged the cops, aced my orals, turned in my thesis, and now…this letter.
When I received it, there was about a 10-second window in which I seriously considered blowing the whole thing off. Then good sense re-asserted itself; I re-submitted the thesis with the required changes (excruciatingly centered), and duly received a Master of Arts diploma fake-signed by Ronald Reagan, S.I. Hayakawa, and two guys appropriately named Ridder and Dummke.
I also decided to abandon any thoughts I might have been entertaining about the lure of an academic career. If academia cared, I never heard about it, having discovered more interesting (and less hidebound) things to do.
Got priorities?
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2. THROWBACK THURSDAY; 885 Clayton St., Haight-Ashbury, San Francisco, June, 1975
CLARE HELPS AMIE WITH HER OUTFIT by Roger Steffens
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3. THROWBACK THURSDAY: San Francisco, Late 1960s
I AM PUSSY; HEAR ME THUNDER;
or
ANYBODY WANNA BROWNIE?
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One of my very favorite H/A businesses was a stroke of genius called "Magnolia Thunderpussy," founded in 1967 by former burlesque dancer and third-generation San Franciscan Patricia Donna Mallon (1939-1996), who sure knew how to get mileage out of a stage name.
At first, Magnolia T's operated solely as a phone-in 24-hour takeout service catering to those who found themselves with the ravenous munchies at odd hours, a frequent HAshbury phenomenon.
Back before takeout became a common option, it seemed like magic: a simple phone call, and Magnolia’s minions would deliver to one’s home, at any hour of the day or night, items from an astounding menu of treats ranging from gourmet chili to gooey homemade pastries and brownies (the latter innocent of any enhancement but double fudge).
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| A Haight-Ashbury tour guide holds an original Magnolia's takeout menu. |
Magnolia T’s eventually settled into a bricks-and-mortar location, replacing the Drogstore Café in the handsome tiled storefront at 1398 Haight St. at the corner of Masonic. This, however, turned out to be somewhat of an unwise move, dimming the magical-takeout mystique (especially as they continued to charge the higher takeout prices and serve on paper and styrofoam). It lasted only a year or two there, then faded into H/A legend.
Since 1997, however, publican David McLean has operated the Magnolia Pub and Brewery on that site. In addition to naming his pub in honor of Magnolia, he annually brews a barley wine named Old Thunderpussy.
Since it first gained renown, Ms. Thunderpussy’s unforgettable moniker has also been appropriated by a record store in Ohio, several LGBT websites and blogs, a humorous photographic “biography,” at least one song, a celebrated drag queen, a type font, and a challenging rock-climbing route in Arizona’s Granite Mountain Wilderness.
PS: I’ve been unable to find a photo on the Internet that can be reliably identified as Patricia Mallon. Anybody got one?
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| A collection possibly/probably containing photos of the elusive Magnolia. The Boarding House was a San Francisco music and supper club for which Magnolia's briefly catered. |
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4. THROWBACK THURSDAY: Early 1970s; On Two Coasts
(Things found between the pages of old books: #2)
PETE’S LULLABY
In the early 1970s, I was often to be found embroidering, especially during the several summers I spent traveling the east coast folk-festival circuit with my friends John Roberts and Tony Barrand, who were in great demand as performers.
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They had even served a stint or two as part of Pete Seeger’s singing crew aboard the sloop Clearwater, performing concerts and benefits in towns along the length of the Hudson River, part of a consciousness-raising crusade to clean up the Hudson’s then dangerously polluted waters.
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| Pete and the Clearwater |
One of John’s other favorite sailing vessels was an historic schooner called the Black Pearl (not to be confused with the CGI ship captained by Jack Sparrow in the Pirates of the Caribbean films).
One festival summer, I appropriated one of John’s workshirts and embroidered a portrait of the Pearl on the back of it, using one of his well-used and slightly stained but clean hankies as weathered fabric for appliquéd sails.
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| John performing in his Black Pearl shirt. |
Now a slight digression: I can’t say I ever really knew Pete Seeger, although we were occasionally in the same festival backstage vicinities at the same time. Thus I was quite surprised to receive a request from him (through my friend Faith Petric, also a folk legend and a good friend of Pete’s) to write a west-coast column for his beloved SING OUT!, magazine, a venerable blend of folk music and social activism that evolved from a broadsheet founded by Pete and his friends in 1955 (and is still published today).
I wrote the column for a couple of years until it got lost in a wave of editorial and format changes, and during that time Pete and I would exchange occasional written notes on subject matter and direction. (End of digression.)
Meanwhile, Pete, having gotten a good look at John’s embroidered shirt, expressed his admiration to the point that his wife Toshi got in touch (I was back in California) with a commission to create a similar appliqued portrait of the Clearwater.
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| Toshi and Pete |
I was honored to do so, and several weeks after I’d sent off the finished work, I received the gracious thank-you note posted here (text typed out below).
(it says:)
Dear Amie Hill,
That is surely the most beautiful piece
of embroidery I’ve ever seen. Toshi is cutting a
big circle around the design (illustration) and putting it on
a new shirt she’s making—a big appliqué.
Thanks to all of you for keeping on
helping the Clearwater, helping Sing Out, & so
many other things.
Up in Vermont you can see stars clearer
than down here, so I enclose a little song for you
in case you ever have to put a kid to sleep.
As ever,
Pete
When I recently re-discovered the letter, I realized I’d almost forgotten about the "little song for you" doodled on the back of the notepaper. Curious, I took to Google to see if Pete had recorded it anywhere. He had not, and moreover, I was unable to locate it in any collection of his lyrics.
Can this really be the only place this little song was written down? (I like to imagine him making it up to sing to his grandchildren.)
Or maybe it was just for me.
(And if anyone has a photo of Pete in the finished Clearwater shirt, I’d love to see it.)
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5. THROWBACK THURSDAY: Syracuse, New York, and Madison, Wisconsin 1965-66
GOT A MATCH?
Before there was Match.com, or even the concept of Internet dating, there was Operation Match, conceived by four Harvard whiz-kids and explained here by Wikipedia:
“Operation Match was the first computer dating service in the United States, begun in 1965. Users filled out a paper questionnaire which they mailed in with a $3 fee. The questionnaire was geared to young college students seeking a date, not a marriage partner. Questions included “Do you believe in a God who answers prayer?” and “Is extensive sexual activity in preparation for marriage part of ‘growing up?’”[1] The questionnaires were transferred to punched cards[2] and processed on an IBM 7090 computer at the Avco service bureau in Wilmington, Massachusetts.[3] A week or two later, the user received an IBM 1401 printout in the mail listing the names and telephone numbers of their matches.”
Or not.
I got involved in OM while it was still in its market-research phase, and I was a senior at Syracuse University. My girls' dorm, Haven Hall, had been selected for the SU trial run, which required a certain number of participants.
As I recall, I was somewhat skeptical, but was talked into it by dorm-mates eager to make up the necessary numbers. We all paid our $3, filled out the somewhat intrusive questionnaire, and waited.
Within a few weeks, sure enough, girls in the dorm began to receive letters (pre-email, remember?), postcards, phone calls and visits from potential matches. Some went out on dates; a few even met longer-term boyfriends. Me, not a peep.
I pretty much forgot all about it, graduated, spent a busy summer running a children’s theater program in Green Bay, Wisconsin, and subsequently entered the University of Wisconsin as a grad student.
It was there that the second questionnaire caught up with me, forwarded through several addresses. It was longer, and if anything more intrusive than the first, and was accompanied by a letter saying that Operation Match had updated its computer system, and would I be willing to take part in this next phase at no charge? Out of curiosity, I did.
Again, weeks passed without a reply. Finally I received a letter from OM, couched in a somewhat sheepish tone (wish I’d kept it). The gist was:
“Dear Miss Hill, We regret to say that our computer system has been unable to find a match for you. Enclosed is a card good for a free run through our computers once our membership and computer capacity have expanded.”
Oddly enough, nobody to whom I mentioned this (including my boyfriend at the time) thought it was at all surprising.
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6. THROWBACK THURSDAY: San Francisco and Marin County, California; April 1974
PANTHERINA RIDES AGAIN
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| California Living photo of me wiping out into Ray Jason's arms by Paul Glines |
Sometime in 1973, I wrote an article on San Francisco street entertainers for
California Living magazine, which is how I met Ray Jason, juggler and showman
extraordinaire.
Pretty much from our first meeting, Ray and I recognized each other as kindred spirits who shared a sense of the absurd and an appreciation of the eccentric. We quickly became buddies, and concocted numerous adventures together, including a music-hall juggling act in which I appeared as a giant chicken.
Somewhere along the line, we even jokingly adopted noms de cirque: Ray was “Lance Flashmuffin,” and I became “Pantherina Fernandez,” both based on ridiculous in-jokes.
In the spring of 1974, in order to extend our range of marketable talents, Ray and I entered into a pact to assist one another in learning stiltwalking and unicycling. Having quickly established that I was a natural on stilts, while Ray was not, we moved on to the unicycle.
Lacking an instructor, we proceeded (as we found out later) to do it the hard way, on a rough outdoor games court full of cracks, twigs, leaves and other impedimenta, instead of on smooth indoor flooring or a recently re-surfaced parking lot (much easier). It was probably twice as time-consuming and frustrating to learn this way (though I did manage to make another amusing California Living story out of our struggles—see photos), but learn we did.
Ray was soon one-wheeling like a champ, and introducing the unicycle into his already impressive juggling act; I rode thereafter mostly for amusement and exercise, and never did turn pro.
Well, except for that one time…
A bit later that spring, I received a call from a harried rep at a local talent agency, who had been tasked with rounding up as many unicyclists as possible for an AT&T commercial. She had been given my name by someone (not Ray, who would have been ideal, but who was off touring as an opening act for Jefferson Starship and thus unavailable), and would I be willing to…
The Bay Area being rich in circus skills at that time, she eventually managed to round up six or seven of us, including the great clown/juggler Larry Pisoni, maestro of the Pickle Family Circus, East Bay whiz Frank Olivier, and several other brilliant performers. Needless to say, I was utterly outclassed. But game.
The director, cameraman and crew were classic Hollywood types, or at least wanted to be, and here was their vision:
1. A beautiful sweeping Marin County landscape, with a road running through it, the scene to be shot from a spot on this road.
2. A line of colorfully dressed young people with linked arms appears on the road, smiling and chatting, half hidden by the crest of a hill, apparently walking arm in arm.
3. As they reach the top, however, it’s revealed that they’re all on unicycles.
Yes, quite a visual, probably destined to take all of five seconds in the
finished commercial montage.
What our directorial genius hadn’t realized, however, was how difficult it is to ride a unicycle uphill on a picturesque but poorly maintained road, with your arms linked with half-a-dozen other people on unicycles, and, oh, yes, smiling and chatting.
So time and again, we started bravely up the hill, then someone (not always I) would hit a stone or rough patch, lurch, and topple, dragging the whole linked line down in a tangle of flying wheels, skinned knees, and imprecations.
We must have attempted this ridiculous maneuver for about an hour (with pauses for dusting off, cycle and costume repairs, and the application of band-aids), and tempers were getting shorter by the minute. We were all, including the director, on the point of nearly losing it, when the oh-so-cool cameraman (whom I’d observed having a toke or two behind the equipment van), strolled up to the director and said in a casual know-it-all aside:
“You know, if they ride on that level stretch further on before the road drops, and I crouch down at the bottom of the hill, I can get the exact same effect.”
Nursing our bruises, and managing to refrain from asking why he hadn’t mentioned that before, we gamely climbed back on the cycles according to this new plan, linked arms, smiled, chatted, took off—and nailed it in a take or two.
Fortunately we were well paid for our efforts, although I never did see that commercial. Perhaps we all ended up on the cutting-room floor—somehow a fitting place for the short-lived but colorful pro unicycling career of the legendary Pantherina Fernandez.
7. THROWBACK THURSDAY: Mammy Morgan’s Hill, 1955-Early1960s
THE HORSE YEARS; or, BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU WISH FOR
I was eleven years old in 1955. and like many little girls of that age, I went a
bit horse-crazy and yearned for, at the very least, a pony of my own.
Be careful what you wish for.
What I hadn’t counted on was my dad going a bit horse-crazy, too. When I begged for riding lessons, he was all for it. However, I found myself, not in fancy togs on a pretty horsie in a select young ladies’ riding academy, but at the rustic facilities belonging to one tough lady named Gypsy Smith.
Forget My Friend Flicka. Gypsy tossed me up onto the back of a mud-brown one-eyed 17-hand-high hulk of a Tennessee Walker named “Church,” and said “Don’t fall off.” I fell off. And got back on.
When I stuck with the riding lessons, my dad made me an unexpected offer: earn enough money (doing chores) for half the purchase price of a horse, and he’d build a stable and pay the rest. After all, we had acres of pastureland.
We enlisted Gypsy Smith’s advice in choosing a horse. The first she chose, a handsome buckskin, proved he was too much horse for me by crashing me through a screen door (with, thankfully, only minor injuries).
We traded that one in, and again consulted Gypsy, but this time the animal she selected at a county auction was a dismaying prospect, a skinny, drooping bay quarter horse gelding with a runny nose, dull eyes, shaved mane, chopped-off tail and a backside rubbed raw during his trip up from Texas in a crowded horse transport. I couldn't believe this sorry animal was supposed to be the Horse of My Dreams.
Gypsy, however, had done her homework, and maintained that the miserable-looking critter had the equivalent of a Ph.D. in Horse, having been trained as a cow pony and then as part of a mounted drill team.
Dubious, we took him home to the stable my dad had constructed from the ruins of a blown-down barn, named him “Tomahawk,” fattened him up, doctored his behind, let his mane and tail grow, and showered him with affection.
Tom indeed proved to be a winner (he and I even picked up a few blue ribbons in
western classes and barrel-racing), not to mention a canny trickster and escape
artist who could open any gate that wasn't wired shut, and learned to jimmy the door into the feed room.
It wasn’t long before I realized that, along with the joys of gallops through green fields and trail rides through the woods, I had essentially sentenced myself to years of getting up in the often-icy pre-dawn hours before school to feed and water the beasts and muck out stinky stalls.
Oh, the years of cleaning
tack; currying animals that delighted in rolling in mud; maintaining erratic
electric fencing; and being on the receiving end of 3 AM phone calls from irate
neighbors to the effect that “Your damn horse is in my garden!! Again!!!”
The workload, you see, had increased when my dad, under the influence of equestrian co-worker Fred Meagher (an illustrator who also drew the “Straight Arrow” comic books and the MobilGas™ flying red Pegasus), decided to acquire his own horse. This was a beautiful but ditzy registered palomino mare named Fancy Prance, who, had she been human, would have worn risqué underwear and chewed gum with her mouth open.
Dad began converting another blown-down building (we had many; this one was a former chicken barn), into a stable with second-floor hay storage, built primarily with wood salvaged from disused boxcars. He also constructed a riding ring from cast-off telephone poles that he bought for a dollar apiece and split into rails. Personally.
Over the years, we boarded a couple of other horses, and acquired “Danny Boy” when his owner left town. The herd topped out at five during my 15th summer, which I spent giving riding lessons to beginners, including, memorably, my mother and three of her friends. My dad started a trail-riding club and took up blacksmithing.
At age 16, however, I went off to be an exchange student to Germany, and by the time I was 17, I was college-bound. When I left, the majority of the horse chores and mucking out devolved unfairly on my brother David, who occasionally rode but was not really a horse person. (He’s since recovered from the trauma and enjoys riding other people’s horses.)
Around that point, although Fancy Prance produced a foal that was sold to a
neighbor, family interest and energy were clearly on the wane. Tomahawk developed
foot trouble and spent his declining years literally out to pasture. The others
were returned to their owners or moved on to new homes. My dad converted the
stables into a rental apartment. The
Horse Years were over for good, and never returned.
I did learn one valuable lesson from them, however: be careful what you wish for.
8. THROWBACK THURSDAY by Request: Mammy Morgan’s Hill, Pennsylvania; sometime
in the 1960s
In response to last week’s TBT, “The Horse Years,” my old friend Holly Almgren exhorted in the “Comments” section:
“TELL THE STORY ABOUT WOL AND THE SURPRISE COFFEE CAN OF NOT COOKIES LOL.”
So here it is.
In 1961, my naturalist friend Peter Bixler talked me into adopting a baby Great Horned Owl, one of a rescued pair whose mother had been killed by crows. As you might imagine, it was quite a remarkable experience raising “Wol” from a big-eyed ball of fluff, beak and talons to an adult-sized raptor.
At one point, during Wol’s adolescence, he seemed to lose his appetite for the
strips of raw liver and kidney we’d been told to feed him. Peter B., called in
to consult, diagnosed a lack of roughage, that is, fur, in his diet.
Subsequently, my brother David, when called upon, would obligingly go out to the hay-and-grain storage barn above the stables with an air rifle and bag a rodent or two for balanced-owl consumption. Problem solved.
Some years before all this owl business, my dad (the living embodiment of DIY)
had constructed a walk-in cold-storage room with built-in upright freezer in
the basement of our old farmhouse.
In the 1940s and 50s, my parents were back-to-the-landers out of financial necessity—my mother preserved and/or froze all manner of fruits and vegetables from the garden, and each fall, my dad would order an entire dead pig from a neighboring farmer and thriftily butcher it into loins and chops.
Thus, with the addition of my mom’s homemade desserts and casseroles, the freezer was always crowded, and since it was fairly narrow in construction, with deep shelves and no inside light, it defied all attempts at systemization—considerable re-arrangement was always necessary to locate whatever one was looking for, and some items seemed to take on a peripatetic life of their own.
One
evening, some years after Wol had left us, my sister Sue and I were
both
visiting, and a jolly group of folks was finishing off a good meal
around the
kitchen table. As we finished the meal, my mother asked Sue to
go down to the freezer and bring up some cookies for dessert.
Rummaging in the freezer, my sis unearthed one of those sturdy cylindrical metal snug-lidded tins that cookies, crackers and coffee used to be sold in. A freezer-tape label on the side clearly read “Toll House Cookies.”
Since this was an informal kitchen gathering, she brought it to the table, wrestled with the tight lid, opened it—and screamed at the top of her lungs.
When one is expecting Toll House Cookies, one is definitely not prepared for a container that one’s younger brother, many years before, had thoughtfully filled to the brim with stiff bloody dead rats. (David had at one point apparently bagged too many for even a growing owl’s appetite. Waste not, want not.)
She laughs about it now, but I suspect that, to this day, Sue is extremely cautious about opening recycled cookie tins.
(NOTE: Sue recalls that it was my mother who opened the tin, with the predictable reaction—I must have been remembering another of many jump-and-squeal incidents. I asked her if I should rewrite the story, but she said it was OK the way it was.)
9. THROWBACK THURSDAY: Mammy Morgan’s Hill, Pennsylvania, 1940s
A POND OF ONE’S OWN
Back in the early 1940s, my parents bought (for about the cost of a mid-range DSLR camera in today’s market) a derelict century-old 25-acre farm, and proceeded to spend the next half-century turning it into a showplace.
My dad loved projects, the bigger the better, and after making the stone
farmhouse livable and putting in a garden, he embarked on a doozy: turning a
half-acre of spring-fed elderberry-and-willow bog into a pond.
At first it was just a muddy bowl-shaped depression in the earth, bulldozered and dammed-up, with an inlet (for a spring that never ran dry) and outlet. Over time, it acquired fish (stocked sunfish and bass), frogs, water snakes, midges, dragonflies, cattails, algae, swallows, waterfowl and the occasional muskrat.
It also acquired accessories: for winter, a small stone glass-fronted lodge
with a fireplace and rubber-mat flooring; a PA system to play old Guy Lombardo
78s for ice dancing; and floodlights on poles to create a nighttime fairyland.
In summer, we had a dock, curtains to turn the Pond House into a changing room; a diving board; a fleet of inner tubes; and best of all, an indestructible cork Navy-surplus raft that provided hours of fun. (A favorite pastime was to try to overturn the Navy-issue raft. We did it once, but it took 17 people.)
And of course, the pond was a magnet to every kid for miles around (the rule: ask
permission each time), not the least my sister Susan and I, aged four and one,
for whom it was both a big shiny temptation and a disaster waiting to happen.
To distract us, my dad cleared away the remains of an old smokehouse (just below the farmhouse and above the ruins of the former springhouse) and out of its grottoesque foundations and a load of cement, created the “Little Pond,” which we were told was our very own. To prove it, Susan’s handprints and my tiny barely-walking footprints were embedded in the concrete rim.
We (and other little ones) spent innumerable hours frolicking in what was essentially
a primitive outdoor bathtub, filled with a hose and emptied through a
rudimentary drainpipe, happily oblivious to the big people splashing in the
valley below us.
The last time I saw both ponds was in 1999, when the place was sold to the
neighbors. Susan’s handprints had been partially chipped away by the ravages of
time, but on the opposite side, two tiny footprints still claimed the Little
Pond as my territory, a puzzle for future owners and archaeologists.
10. THROWBACK THURSDAY: Mammy Morgan’s Hill, c.1941
THE SPLINTER
or
A MOST UNUSUAL FAMILY HEIRLOOM
One day in the early 1940s, my dad went down to the cellar of our then-very-rustic farmhouse to fetch some firewood. As he squatted down next to a battered post that was helping to hold up the century-old ceiling, he felt a sudden sharp pain. On further examination, he discovered that he had acquired a whopping four-inch splinter in a highly personal part of his anatomy.
My mother, after a few ineffectual efforts with a pair of pliers, decided, quite
rightly and much to my dad’s annoyance, that this was a feat of extraction far
beyond her capabilities.
She drove him (grumbling and sitting askew) to the nearest hospital, where, amid much suppressed hilarity on the part of the medical staff, the offending chunk of wood was removed in two pieces with the aid of a scalpel.
My dad, of course (once he got over his embarrassment), kept the item for bragging rights, enshrining it in an envelope from my grandfather’s now-defunct insurance agency, and labeling it in his own handwriting.
Since had been wearing his good tweed trousers, my mother was, for her part,
quite relieved that The Splinter had passed right through the weave without
leaving a hole for her to repair. This was more than could be said of my dad,
who bore the scars of the stitches (and had to listen to the story) for the
rest of his life.
But, in the end, not only did he leave us with a great family tale, but also
accidentally provided us with a unique heirloom to remember him by.
11. THROWBACK THURSDAY: Renaissance Pleasure Faire, Black Point, Novato, California, 1970s
LOREN WASHBURN ETCHING OF MAD MAUDLEN
One day in the early 1990s, Renaissance Pleasure Faire co-founder Phyllis Patterson came to my house for tea, bringing with her a wonderful gift: a beautifully framed woodcut of my alter ego, Mad Maudlen, ghosting through the deserted Faire by moonlight.
Now, looking at the details of this lovely work by noted RPF artist M. Loren Washburn, I can almost pinpoint the year by Maudlen’s accessories. By 1979, I’d learned the wisdom of wearing a broad-brimmed (if tattered) hat and cheesecloth veil and wimple to keep off the direct rays of the sun.
Willie, the beloved
“King of the Children,” had acquired a gold crown and red velvet robe in place
of his former rags. I was wearing a crudely elegant shell necklace presented by
an admirer to mark Maudlen’s status as a perpetual pilgrim, and had discovered
the advantages of wearing a crude waist-pouch for such items as throat
lozenges, tissues, and sunscreen to re-apply during the times Maudlen faded
behind one of the Faire’s omnipresent burlap draperies for a wee break.
Comparing the woodcut to Don Berry’s photos from that year, I’m amazed at the level of detail, and humbled to think that Maudlen and I will be so remembered.
12. THROWBACK THURSDAY 1930-2015; Pennsylvania, Minnesota, Arizona, and several states in between.
JOCKS: A FAMILY TRADITION
Howard’s son, my brother David, started early in peewee football (L), and can
be seen on the right carrying getting some excellent blocking while carrying
the ball.
After a stellar high-school football and track career in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Connecticut (due to family relocations for my dad’s job as a market researcher), David switched to rugby at Brown University, and in real life majored in historical reconstruction and architectural design.
And it's not just the guys: David's daughter Morgan became a quadruple threat: in three-day eventing on horseback (dressage, jumping and cross-country); cross-country skiing; snowboarding; and soccer. She's now a New York City fashion designer.
My sister Sue (shown below zip-lining at age 78), married Phil Richards, a champion collegiate wrestler for Temple University who was inducted into the National Wrestling Hall of Fame in 2010. Phil founded the North Star Financial Companies.
Sue and Phil
Their son (and Howard’s grandson) Scott Richards was one of the smallest and lightest players for the University of Minnesota Golden Gophers, but so fit and determined that he became known as “Rocky” to his teammates. He became president of North Star Financial.
Scott’s son Nicolas (Howard’s great-grandson) also became a high-scoring footballer
Another of Howard’s grandsons, Kip Richards, an all-arounder (skiing, mountain-climbing, sailing, snowboarding, kid-wrangling) has the muscle to lift two small children into the air on a trampoline. He's also the owner of Source Direct Imports.
Another of Howard's great-grandsons, Tre Richards, posed with football gear:
He's never played knockdown football (and may never) but is seen below winning a cross-country meet, sailing, and scoring in flag football.
And (Clockwise from top L) Morgan Hill, Amie Hill, Cameron Richards and Kyla Church demonstrate our love of all things Horse.
Heredity? Environment? Both? Probably.
13. THROWBACK THURSDAY: Mammy Morgan’s Hill, Pennsylvania, c. 1958.
NAMING THE CAT
Here I am, posing à la Catwoman for my dad with our elegant puss. Her name was:
Akistronscheherazadeammagreezidonnalooziadalvidorrisreccatooccatoccadooma.
Say what?
OK, here’s how it happened. We acquired a grownup cat, black without a single white hair. Did we name her “Blackie?” Oh, no, not in our family.
AKISTRON: This was my dad’s suggestion, after seeing a TV sketch in which the great Sid Caesar made up the word in an attempt to win a Scrabble game. As I recall, Caesar claimed it was part of a tractor hitch.
SCHEHERAZADE: Being a 14-year-old girl, I wanted a name that conjured up the exotic and mysterious nature that I attributed to our kitty. We compromised on both.
AMMAGREEZI, DONNALOOZIA, and DALVIDORRIS: Then my mother remembered that her Great-Aunt Ida Salora Kemmerer Fabel had owned three cats with those names, so, liking the sounds, we tacked them on.
(I later realized that the last two were derived from the 1892-and-many-revivals farce Charley’s Aunt, in which the titular aunt from Brazil is one Donna Lucia d’Alvadorez. We never did figure out the “Ammagreezi.”)
RECCATOOCATOCCADOOMA: This was taken from a comedy routine in those 1950s days when stars were combining family names to create company names, e.g. “Desilu,” for Desi Arnaz and Lucille Ball, or “Gomalco,” for comedian George Gobel, his co-producer O’ Malley and his wife Alice. Other stars combined their children’s names.
In this particular comic sketch, the owner is bragging to another guy about his production company, Reccatoocatoccadooma, named for his offspring. “Gracious!” cries the other man, “How many children do you have?” “Just one,” was the answer, “Little Reccatoocatoccadooma.” My brother and I thought this was pretty hilarious, with predictable results re the cat…
…who didn’t care what we called her, as long as the food and cuddles kept
coming, and, if she deigned to respond at all, answered to “Aki.”
14. THROWBACK THURSDAY: Somewhere in Berkeley, California, May, 1974
A TOUCH OF SPRING…
…And a slice of time. Roger Steffens behind the camera, Tim Page taking photographic aim at Jane Voss, Hoyle Osborne, and Eric Thompson on guitar with Tony Marcus and Suzy Thompson on fiddle.
I’m seated on the right in my homemade hippie swirl skirt (check out Jane’s patchwork number, too), embroidering something as I frequently was in those days (take a look at Tim’s jeans).
And where are we all now?
Jane and Hoyle (former housemates; Jane is a singer, Hoyle a kick-ass piano player) are still together, performing and recording and living in the Southwest.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XtfyP0wwgms (Jane Voss and Hoyle Osborne/Alexander’s Ragtime Band/2016/3:08)
Tony Marcus (shown on the right below) playing fiddle with the Honky Tonk Dreamers. He's played for and recorded with a number of Western, swing, jazz and old-timey bands, including the Lost Weekend Western Swing Band, Cats & Jammers, The Royal Society Jazz Orchestra, Leftover Dreams, and R. Crumb & his Cheap Suit Serenaders. He is also a well-respected guitar instructor.
Eric and Suzy Thompson are also still together and still making music. From their website:
“Eric's flatpicking on guitar and mandolin is exceptional for its purity
of tone, speed, and soulfulness; Suzy is a powerful singer, an award-winning
fiddler and Cajun accordion player who has apprenticed with older generation
Louisiana Cajun musicians under an NEA Fellowship. Founding members of many
influential roots music groups, including the Black Mountain Boys, Any Old Time,
the Klezmorim, and the California Cajun Orchestra, Eric and Suzy have also
worked with Maria Muldaur, David Grisman, Peter Rowan, Jim Kweskin, Geoff
Muldaur, Jerry Garcia, Darol Anger, Laurie Lewis, the Savoy Doucet Cajun Trio,
and many other fine musicians.”
http://www.ericandsuzy.com/
Roger Steffens [from Wikipedia] (born June 17, 1942) is a Brooklyn, New York born actor, author, lecturer, editor, reggae archivist, photographer, producer. Roger is perhaps best known for his reggae archives, in particular his archives of Bob Marley.[1] Six rooms of his home in Los Angeles house his archives, which include the world's largest collection of Bob Marley material. Based on these archives Roger lectures internationally with a multi-media presentation called The Life of Bob Marley. Roger's radio career began in New York in 1961, and was co-host of the award-winning Reggae Beat on KCRW in Los Angeles and was syndicated on 130 stations worldwide in the 1980s.
In the past few years, Roger has also become known for his photography work, as a result of The Family Acid Instagram site, curated by his kids Kate and Devon Steffens.
A book of these photos, The Family Acid, going back to the 1960s in Vietnam and through the psychedelic years (which, for Roger, have never stopped) was published in 2014, and numerous gallery shows have ensued, as well as The Family Acid: Jamaica (2017), and The Family Acid: California in 2019.
Tim Page had been severely injured in 1969 while working as a photojournalist for Time/LIFE. Not expected to live, much less walk, speak or work again, Tim confounded the medical profession by doing all of the above and more. Since Roger’s photo was taken, he has published nine books of photography and writing, been the subject of three documentary films, and continued to document the people of Southeast Asia, Afghanistan and other countries.
In 2017, he and other Vietnam War journalists were honored with an exhibit “Reporting Vietnam” at the Newseum in Washington DC, where the advertising featured two heartbreakingly young photojournalists (Tim was 19 or 20) taking cover in a trench. Comments on the photos are by Tim’s life partner Mau.
"Here's a few pix from the Newseum's 'Reporting Vietnam' exhibition - who knew that 2 Brits who moved to Australia would end up being the poster boys for Nam war reporting !! The pic was taken by Steve Northup …..Amazing that no one seems to have picked up on the fact of the heritage of these two poster boys !!
apparently they are billboard size all over DC !!"
"…
the guy behind the log with Tim is Martin Stuart Fox. I actually got
them talking on video about that day …. when both of them
thought they were not going to get out" …Then Tim went back in next day with Flynn !!! (Sean Flynn, son of Errol, and Tim's best buddy)
"from left, Al Rockoff (played by John Malkovich in 'The Killing Fields'), Tim Page, Nicky Ut
(Napalm Girl pix), Michael Ebert (looks after Horst Faas archive), and Doan
Cong Tinh—famous photographer from the Other Side—meet on steps of War Remnants
Museum, Saigon."
One innocent springtime photo; so much content.
15. THROWBACK THURSDAY: 1970s Dickens Faire
(NOT EVERYBODY GETS TO PLAY A GIANT CHICKEN AT CHRISTMASTIME)
I, however, did,
at the behest of my friend and partner-in-fun Ray Jason, who in 1972
dreamed up an act called "Dr. W. W. Whipple, The Eccentric Juggler, and
his Fine Feathered Friend." I portrayed the good doctor's assistant and
nemesis, doing my best to fowl things up. The act literally laid an egg.
Several eggs, actually, but I did get another California Living article out of that crazy season.
16. THROWBACK THURSDAY: Occidental, Caifornia; 1970s-80s
THE WONDERFUL WIZARD OF MAIN STREET
Uncle David’s Fun Store grew like a magic mushroom out of an ordinary
bookstore and stationery shop on Main Street in the Western Sonoma County town
of Occidental, CA.
On its hilltop surrounded by redwood forests, tiny Occidental had for years been a mecca for gastronomes, with as many as five restaurants at a time located in its two-block downtown. In the era of which I write, it was also developing as a central locus for hip artists, musicians and commune-dwellers, and was fast on its way to becoming a tourist destination.
With the advent of Uncle David in the late 1970s, the bookstore’s poky little interior was gradually transformed into a hippie version of The Old Curiosity Shop, full of the strange, prosaic, wondrous, useful, and weird in the world of novelties, comics, and oddly remaindered merchandise.
Its interior was dim and jumbled and faintly glittering, like a dragon’s hoard. Its smell was a heady mixture of dog (there were always one or two sprawled on the dusty carpet), incense, old books (a tortuous hallway led to a roomful of musty miscellany), and the inside of a bong.
Behind the tiny counter, you might find Uncle David himself, always ready for an off-the-wall political discussion; or his partner, Aunt Janice, who otherwise sat in a small back office doing astrology charts or other peoples’ typing in pre-computer days; or one of the tangle of in-laws, daughters, stepchildren, and friends who always seemed to be coming or going on odd jobs.
None of these people looked or smelled like your average Midwesterner, thus it was always amusing to watch unsuspecting tourists ushering their kids in with cries of “Oh, look! A fun store!”, only to see them come backing out, eyes rolling like spooked ponies, clutching their offspring, who, as often as not, were flailing frantically to break away and get back in. It was a kids’ dream, after all, with Uncle David, the hairiest kid of all, as wizard-in residence.
The Fun Store closed well over a decade ago when Uncle David moved to Santa Fe to market hemp clothing. (He remains a great connoisseur of all things hemp).
He’s been back in Western Sonoma County for some time now, effortlessly hip, genial, offbeat, a friend to all, and greatly in demand as a storyteller in schools and libraries and on his own KOWS-FM radio shows ("Uncle Dave’s Storytime" on Saturdays at 9 am: and "The Real Hippie Hour" Tuesdays at 2pm).
I’ve never heard Uncle David say a bad word about anyone who wasn't a politician, and my heart always lifts a little when I encounter him.
Years ago, someone with the idea of creating an Occidental historical pageant (which came to nothing) suggested I write some songs for it. This was the first one:
UNCLE DAVID’S FUN STORE
Well, Uncle David had a store in
Greater Downtown Occidental
What he sold was far from borin’
It catered to the elemental
And occasional need to be
Silly, rude and immature,
You’d get all the help you’d need
At Uncle David’s Fun Store.
Where he sold…
Red clown noses, alien eyeballs,
Whoopee cushions, plastic dog poo,
Rasta wigs and rubber chickens,
Bubble gum and books on voodoo
Controversial bumper stickers,
Barbie dolls and Hobbit lore
You’d spend your money pretty quick in
Uncle David’s Fun Store
And you could…
Get your wood hauled,
Get your stars read,
Get your notes typed by Aunt Janice,
Get into a knock-down drag-out
Argument with Uncle David,
In the process you might find out
What your funny bone was for,
Take a deep breath and blow your mind at
Uncle David’s Fun Store
And then buy…
Vampire teeth and wind-up Wookiees,
“No squirt guns — we don’t sell war toys,”
Noseflutes, drums, kazoos and whistles
“Put it to your lips, you bought it.”
Plastic barf and jelly spiders,
Icky, sticky stuff galore,
You sure could lose your blues inside of
Uncle David’s Fun Store.
Where he sold…
Red clown noses, alien eyeballs,
Whoopee cushions, plastic dog poo,
Rasta wigs and rubber chickens,
Bubble gum and books on voodoo
Controversial bumper stickers,
Barbie dolls and Hobbit lore
Holographic naughty pictures
Lifelike plastic boa constrictors,
Tricks to make you wet your knickers
Giggles, chortles, snorts and snickers
Tickles for your soul and ticker
(And it’s all cheap, no need to dicker)
It’s Uncle David’s Fun Store!
17. THROWBACK THURSDAY: Various Civil War Battlefields, 1863-1915
DISTANT BATTLES,
Or
THE GREAT-GRANDFATHERS GO TO WAR
For about a half-dozen of my great-grandfathers, great-great-grandfathers and
great-uncles, the War Between the States was a highly personal matter. My mother’s
ancestors fought for the Union, my dad’s for the Confederacy. Nobody in our
family made a big deal about it when I was growing up; it was only later that I learned the facts and stories below.
My paternal grandfather, Augustus Roan Hill fought with a Mississippi regiment, but, according to my dad, refused to talk about it..
My great-great uncle Micajah Weiss, who enlisted in the Union Army as a teamster at age 65, made it through most of the great battles safe and sound, only to be done in by the 50th anniversary gathering of veterans at the Battle of Gettysburg, where such a fuss was made over him under a hot July sun that, upon returning home, he took to his bed and died some months later at the age of 114.
My great Granddad George B. Arnts came late to the fray, just in time to have
fun ripping up Confederate railroad tracks and to be sidelined out of gun range with
malaria at the Siege of Petersburg (a truly nasty affair). In 1864, with able-bodied
men in great demand as cannon fodder, he had gotten a signing bonus sufficient to buy
a good-sized farm, and afterwards received a $10-a-month pension to sweeten the chills
and fever.
The most sadly amazing Civil War tale, however, belongs to George B.’s uncle, George
W. Arnts. As happens in large farm families, the two were about the same age,
and were good friends.
George W., a member of the 143rd Pennsylvania Regiment, was seen to be wounded in the ferocious fighting at Gettysburg, but in the wake of the battle, neither he nor his corpse was ever accounted for.
Not, that is, until 1915, when the new owner of a farm on the site of the battle decided to jack up his barn to put stables underneath. There was George W. where he’d crawled to die, in full uniform, his gun by his side, identifiable by the badge on his cap and a photo of his wife and little girl in his pocket.
His daughters, by then women in their sixties, finally got to see their father buried with full military honors over half a century after the bloodiest battle of a bloody war.
War sucks, even in the past.
18. THROWBACK THURSDAY, San Francisco, California, Mid-1970S
POSING FOR SCHONEBERG
One fall day, as I went about my duties as Mistress of Revels at the Northern California Renaissance Pleasure Faire, I was approached by a goateed gentleman wearing a black cape and broad-brimmed hat straight out of a Toulouse-Lautrec poster.
He introduced himself as Sheldon Schoneberg, said that he was an artist, gave
me his card, and asked If I’d be interested in sitting for him in the costume I
was wearing—mentioning that a number of other Faire performers had been thus
immortalized. I asked around and was told that he was the real deal, in fact an
artist and a gentleman, and paid well.
And so it came to pass that nearly every week for about two years, I showed up
at his “atelier” by appointment and spent several morning hours posing in
selections from his impressive collection of fantasy-hippie costumes and props.
The thing was, that having studied in France as a young man (he was born in
1926), Schoneberg had never quite gotten over it. I always had the feeling
(perhaps a fantasy) that somewhere in the back of his mind he still thought of
himself as a denizen of the Left Bank in Paris, an untamed fauve strolling
the streets of Montmartre, plucking delicious young models from the streets and
cabarets, painting them by day, rollicking lustfully with them at night, an
undiscovered genius, brilliant, difficult, aglow with the fire in his belly.
In reality, Schoenberg as an artist was not another Picasso, but simply very,
very good. With his fluid and skillful sense of line and drafting techniques,
coupled with his marvelous sense of color, his paintings and drawings were
imaginative, pleasantly accessible, and eminently salable.
He could do photographic realism, abstract, and everything in between, but at the time I was posing for him, he favored loose, sprawling bohemian-like fantasies in oil pastels.
At least four days a week (at least in the era when I was sitting for him), he would sit down in front of the model of the day and, in several hours’ time, produce a lively drawing that, depending on size, technique, complexity and subject matter, would sell for a generous three-or-four-figure sum.
Subtract agent’s fees, multiply by four sessions a week augmented with
special portrait commissions (he could echo any style, from photographic
realism to impressionism to pseudo-Lautrec) and you had a very tidy living.
Instead of a Paris garret, his “atelier” was the sunny front room of a classy Pacific Heights demi-mansion. Instead of indulging in lusty interludes with lush young models, he was happily married, with two small daughters who, dressed in their private-school uniforms, liked to tiptoe in for a peek unless the door was closed for privacy.
This meant that the model might be topless, or even, on
rare occasions, kind of nude; the results were, however, inevitably chaste and
tasteful, and Schoenberg’s behavior invariably correct.
it was when I decided to cut my long flowing hair that my usefulness as a
Schoneberg model came to an end, after perhaps 50 or 60 drawings.
Although the artist himself died in 2012, his artwork is still very much a
salable commodity, frequently changing hands at internet-based gallery and
auction sites, at which times the images are often captured online.
Just for fun, I’ll occasionally enter Sheldon C. (for Clyde) Schoneberg into
Google Images, and am tickled whenever I spot his fleeting impressions of my
much younger self—dressed as a gypsy, admiring my reflection in a mirror,
strumming a guitar, staring dreamily out of a window—gentle ghosts from a
long-haired past.
19. THROWBACK THURSDAY: San Francisco, 1970 and 1974
MEET THE…
So one day after hours at Rolling Stone, my friend Ben Fong-Torres and I were sitting on a disused desk in the deserted hallway of the mag’s new 3rd Street office, trying to decide where to have dinner, when RS publisher-editor Jann Wenner hove into view, with a pale scruffy-looking fellow in tow.
“Ben, Amie, this is John,” said Jann, “I’m just giving him the tour.” We
chatted politely and briefly—during which time I noted that the guy had a
pleasant British accent—and then the twosome disappeared off down the hall.
I’m not sure about Ben, but it took a good minute after they were gone for me to figure it out.
I was aware that George Harrison, as part of his “Dark Horse” tour with Ravi Shankar and others, had done a benefit concert for the then-struggling HAFMC a couple of nights before. I now heard the rumor that he planned to stop by on this particular evening with Founder/Director David Smith for a tour of the Medical Clinic.
There was, however, also a full load of patients to be seen, so I got to work at the front-hall triage desk. Suddenly one of the med techs came running up the stairs from the street two at a time, panting, “He’s gone to the Detox Clinic!!!” (The Medical, Detox, and Women’s Needs Clinics were then in three separate buildings, and not that close together.) Immediately the place emptied of surplus personnel and then some, leaving a skeleton crew to deal with the patient load.
I had finished processing those in line, and was sitting at the desk in the empty hallway filling out forms, when I heard footsteps on the stairs. Trying to keep up with the work, I didn’t raise my head and say, “May I help you?” until the feet stopped in front of the desk, and I looked up into the warm chocolate-brown eyes of Mr. George Harrison.
“Hello,” he said, smiling. “I’m George. David Smith told me to come up and wait while he found a parking space.” Reader, he was charming; he asked how long I’d been working at the clinic, why I’d decided to volunteer, how many patients were there that night, and other sincere and intelligent questions.
Then Dr. David appeared, whisked GH off for the promised tour (a few rooms and a hallway), and introduced him around. George shook hands with staff members, spoke pleasantly, accepted thanks for the benefit concert, smiled at a roomful of stunned patients, and then the two of them were back down the steps and gone. 12 minutes max.
A bit later, some of the staffers who had left in such a hurry trooped glumly back. “He never showed,” they grumbled.
“You should have stuck around,” I said airily, “He’s got beautiful eyes."
Sir Mick and Tim Page (with unidentified onlooker), photographed comparing
teeny-weenies by Tim’s love-and-life-partner Marianne (“Mau”) Harris. She
wrote:
“We went to see the Stones—loved it. Then Mick Jagger wanted to meet Tim! (Life with Page—one minute rearranging his sock drawer, next sitting next to Mick for dinner). Not sure what they are comparing in this one—lenses?? Didn't want to take pictures - till Mick said 'I gotta get a picture of Tim Page!’”
ALL MY BLOGS
Pretty much from our first meeting, Ray and I recognized each other as kindred spirits who shared a sense of the absurd and an appreciation of the eccentric. We quickly became buddies, and concocted numerous adventures together, including a music-hall juggling act in which I appeared as a giant chicken.
Somewhere along the line, we even jokingly adopted noms de cirque: Ray was “Lance Flashmuffin,” and I became “Pantherina Fernandez,” both based on ridiculous in-jokes.
In the spring of 1974, in order to extend our range of marketable talents, Ray and I entered into a pact to assist one another in learning stiltwalking and unicycling. Having quickly established that I was a natural on stilts, while Ray was not, we moved on to the unicycle.
Lacking an instructor, we proceeded (as we found out later) to do it the hard way, on a rough outdoor games court full of cracks, twigs, leaves and other impedimenta, instead of on smooth indoor flooring or a recently re-surfaced parking lot (much easier). It was probably twice as time-consuming and frustrating to learn this way (though I did manage to make another amusing California Living story out of our struggles—see photos), but learn we did.
Ray was soon one-wheeling like a champ, and introducing the unicycle into his already impressive juggling act; I rode thereafter mostly for amusement and exercise, and never did turn pro.
Well, except for that one time…
A bit later that spring, I received a call from a harried rep at a local talent agency, who had been tasked with rounding up as many unicyclists as possible for an AT&T commercial. She had been given my name by someone (not Ray, who would have been ideal, but who was off touring as an opening act for Jefferson Starship and thus unavailable), and would I be willing to…
The Bay Area being rich in circus skills at that time, she eventually managed to round up six or seven of us, including the great clown/juggler Larry Pisoni, maestro of the Pickle Family Circus, East Bay whiz Frank Olivier, and several other brilliant performers. Needless to say, I was utterly outclassed. But game.
 |
| The brilliant Larry Pisoni, founder of the Pickle Family Circus. |
The director, cameraman and crew were classic Hollywood types, or at least wanted to be, and here was their vision:
1. A beautiful sweeping Marin County landscape, with a road running through it, the scene to be shot from a spot on this road.
2. A line of colorfully dressed young people with linked arms appears on the road, smiling and chatting, half hidden by the crest of a hill, apparently walking arm in arm.
 |
| Frank Olivier |
What our directorial genius hadn’t realized, however, was how difficult it is to ride a unicycle uphill on a picturesque but poorly maintained road, with your arms linked with half-a-dozen other people on unicycles, and, oh, yes, smiling and chatting.
So time and again, we started bravely up the hill, then someone (not always I) would hit a stone or rough patch, lurch, and topple, dragging the whole linked line down in a tangle of flying wheels, skinned knees, and imprecations.
We must have attempted this ridiculous maneuver for about an hour (with pauses for dusting off, cycle and costume repairs, and the application of band-aids), and tempers were getting shorter by the minute. We were all, including the director, on the point of nearly losing it, when the oh-so-cool cameraman (whom I’d observed having a toke or two behind the equipment van), strolled up to the director and said in a casual know-it-all aside:
“You know, if they ride on that level stretch further on before the road drops, and I crouch down at the bottom of the hill, I can get the exact same effect.”
Nursing our bruises, and managing to refrain from asking why he hadn’t mentioned that before, we gamely climbed back on the cycles according to this new plan, linked arms, smiled, chatted, took off—and nailed it in a take or two.
Fortunately we were well paid for our efforts, although I never did see that commercial. Perhaps we all ended up on the cutting-room floor—somehow a fitting place for the short-lived but colorful pro unicycling career of the legendary Pantherina Fernandez.
 |
| Unicycling with Ray (photo by Paul Glines) |
#########################
7. THROWBACK THURSDAY: Mammy Morgan’s Hill, 1955-Early1960s
THE HORSE YEARS; or, BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU WISH FOR
 |
| Jumping Tomahawk |
Be careful what you wish for.
What I hadn’t counted on was my dad going a bit horse-crazy, too. When I begged for riding lessons, he was all for it. However, I found myself, not in fancy togs on a pretty horsie in a select young ladies’ riding academy, but at the rustic facilities belonging to one tough lady named Gypsy Smith.
Forget My Friend Flicka. Gypsy tossed me up onto the back of a mud-brown one-eyed 17-hand-high hulk of a Tennessee Walker named “Church,” and said “Don’t fall off.” I fell off. And got back on.
When I stuck with the riding lessons, my dad made me an unexpected offer: earn enough money (doing chores) for half the purchase price of a horse, and he’d build a stable and pay the rest. After all, we had acres of pastureland.
We enlisted Gypsy Smith’s advice in choosing a horse. The first she chose, a handsome buckskin, proved he was too much horse for me by crashing me through a screen door (with, thankfully, only minor injuries).
We traded that one in, and again consulted Gypsy, but this time the animal she selected at a county auction was a dismaying prospect, a skinny, drooping bay quarter horse gelding with a runny nose, dull eyes, shaved mane, chopped-off tail and a backside rubbed raw during his trip up from Texas in a crowded horse transport. I couldn't believe this sorry animal was supposed to be the Horse of My Dreams.
Gypsy, however, had done her homework, and maintained that the miserable-looking critter had the equivalent of a Ph.D. in Horse, having been trained as a cow pony and then as part of a mounted drill team.
Dubious, we took him home to the stable my dad had constructed from the ruins of a blown-down barn, named him “Tomahawk,” fattened him up, doctored his behind, let his mane and tail grow, and showered him with affection.
 |
| Brother David on Tomahawk |
It wasn’t long before I realized that, along with the joys of gallops through green fields and trail rides through the woods, I had essentially sentenced myself to years of getting up in the often-icy pre-dawn hours before school to feed and water the beasts and muck out stinky stalls.
 |
| Dad, Tomahawk, Fancy, and me in the original corral/stable built into the ruins of a fallen-down barn. |
The workload, you see, had increased when my dad, under the influence of equestrian co-worker Fred Meagher (an illustrator who also drew the “Straight Arrow” comic books and the MobilGas™ flying red Pegasus), decided to acquire his own horse. This was a beautiful but ditzy registered palomino mare named Fancy Prance, who, had she been human, would have worn risqué underwear and chewed gum with her mouth open.
 |
| Brother David shares a snack with Fancy Prance. |
Dad began converting another blown-down building (we had many; this one was a former chicken barn), into a stable with second-floor hay storage, built primarily with wood salvaged from disused boxcars. He also constructed a riding ring from cast-off telephone poles that he bought for a dollar apiece and split into rails. Personally.
Dad builds a stable and a riding ring (with Danny Boy).
Over the years, we boarded a couple of other horses, and acquired “Danny Boy” when his owner left town. The herd topped out at five during my 15th summer, which I spent giving riding lessons to beginners, including, memorably, my mother and three of her friends. My dad started a trail-riding club and took up blacksmithing.
 |
| A visitor from Pakistan on Danny Boy; me on Fancy. |
 |
| Dad with Tom, Fancy, and his very own anvil. |
At age 16, however, I went off to be an exchange student to Germany, and by the time I was 17, I was college-bound. When I left, the majority of the horse chores and mucking out devolved unfairly on my brother David, who occasionally rode but was not really a horse person. (He’s since recovered from the trauma and enjoys riding other people’s horses.)
 |
| Giving Fancy a bath in the pond. |
I did learn one valuable lesson from them, however: be careful what you wish for.
 |
| Fancy and Pandora #################### |
In response to last week’s TBT, “The Horse Years,” my old friend Holly Almgren exhorted in the “Comments” section:
“TELL THE STORY ABOUT WOL AND THE SURPRISE COFFEE CAN OF NOT COOKIES LOL.”
So here it is.
In 1961, my naturalist friend Peter Bixler talked me into adopting a baby Great Horned Owl, one of a rescued pair whose mother had been killed by crows. As you might imagine, it was quite a remarkable experience raising “Wol” from a big-eyed ball of fluff, beak and talons to an adult-sized raptor.
 |
| Brother David with fluffball. |
Subsequently, my brother David, when called upon, would obligingly go out to the hay-and-grain storage barn above the stables with an air rifle and bag a rodent or two for balanced-owl consumption. Problem solved.
 |
| Wol and I at the kitchen table |
In the 1940s and 50s, my parents were back-to-the-landers out of financial necessity—my mother preserved and/or froze all manner of fruits and vegetables from the garden, and each fall, my dad would order an entire dead pig from a neighboring farmer and thriftily butcher it into loins and chops.
Thus, with the addition of my mom’s homemade desserts and casseroles, the freezer was always crowded, and since it was fairly narrow in construction, with deep shelves and no inside light, it defied all attempts at systemization—considerable re-arrangement was always necessary to locate whatever one was looking for, and some items seemed to take on a peripatetic life of their own.
 |
| Mother feeding Wol |
Rummaging in the freezer, my sis unearthed one of those sturdy cylindrical metal snug-lidded tins that cookies, crackers and coffee used to be sold in. A freezer-tape label on the side clearly read “Toll House Cookies.”
Since this was an informal kitchen gathering, she brought it to the table, wrestled with the tight lid, opened it—and screamed at the top of her lungs.
When one is expecting Toll House Cookies, one is definitely not prepared for a container that one’s younger brother, many years before, had thoughtfully filled to the brim with stiff bloody dead rats. (David had at one point apparently bagged too many for even a growing owl’s appetite. Waste not, want not.)
She laughs about it now, but I suspect that, to this day, Sue is extremely cautious about opening recycled cookie tins.
(NOTE: Sue recalls that it was my mother who opened the tin, with the predictable reaction—I must have been remembering another of many jump-and-squeal incidents. I asked her if I should rewrite the story, but she said it was OK the way it was.)
#########################
9. THROWBACK THURSDAY: Mammy Morgan’s Hill, Pennsylvania, 1940s
A POND OF ONE’S OWN
Back in the early 1940s, my parents bought (for about the cost of a mid-range DSLR camera in today’s market) a derelict century-old 25-acre farm, and proceeded to spend the next half-century turning it into a showplace.
 |
| Yes, I did grow up in Paradise. The pond is in the center, behind the flowering tree. |
At first it was just a muddy bowl-shaped depression in the earth, bulldozered and dammed-up, with an inlet (for a spring that never ran dry) and outlet. Over time, it acquired fish (stocked sunfish and bass), frogs, water snakes, midges, dragonflies, cattails, algae, swallows, waterfowl and the occasional muskrat.
 |
| Pond with raft and house in background. |
In summer, we had a dock, curtains to turn the Pond House into a changing room; a diving board; a fleet of inner tubes; and best of all, an indestructible cork Navy-surplus raft that provided hours of fun. (A favorite pastime was to try to overturn the Navy-issue raft. We did it once, but it took 17 people.)
 |
| My sister Susan is in the inner tube at left. I'm standing in the dark bathing suit, close to my mother. |
To distract us, my dad cleared away the remains of an old smokehouse (just below the farmhouse and above the ruins of the former springhouse) and out of its grottoesque foundations and a load of cement, created the “Little Pond,” which we were told was our very own. To prove it, Susan’s handprints and my tiny barely-walking footprints were embedded in the concrete rim.
 |
| My mom and dad pose with us on the first day of the Little Pond. |
 |
| Suit optional |
 |
| Autumn, early 2000s (Photo by Sue Richards) |
######################
10. THROWBACK THURSDAY: Mammy Morgan’s Hill, c.1941
THE SPLINTER
or
A MOST UNUSUAL FAMILY HEIRLOOM
One day in the early 1940s, my dad went down to the cellar of our then-very-rustic farmhouse to fetch some firewood. As he squatted down next to a battered post that was helping to hold up the century-old ceiling, he felt a sudden sharp pain. On further examination, he discovered that he had acquired a whopping four-inch splinter in a highly personal part of his anatomy.
 |
| Life-size. |
She drove him (grumbling and sitting askew) to the nearest hospital, where, amid much suppressed hilarity on the part of the medical staff, the offending chunk of wood was removed in two pieces with the aid of a scalpel.
My dad, of course (once he got over his embarrassment), kept the item for bragging rights, enshrining it in an envelope from my grandfather’s now-defunct insurance agency, and labeling it in his own handwriting.
 |
| "Splinter removed from Howard's Back side. Total length 4 inches. Completely embedded." |
 |
####################
11. THROWBACK THURSDAY: Renaissance Pleasure Faire, Black Point, Novato, California, 1970s
LOREN WASHBURN ETCHING OF MAD MAUDLEN
One day in the early 1990s, Renaissance Pleasure Faire co-founder Phyllis Patterson came to my house for tea, bringing with her a wonderful gift: a beautifully framed woodcut of my alter ego, Mad Maudlen, ghosting through the deserted Faire by moonlight.
Now, looking at the details of this lovely work by noted RPF artist M. Loren Washburn, I can almost pinpoint the year by Maudlen’s accessories. By 1979, I’d learned the wisdom of wearing a broad-brimmed (if tattered) hat and cheesecloth veil and wimple to keep off the direct rays of the sun.
 |
Comparing the woodcut to Don Berry’s photos from that year, I’m amazed at the level of detail, and humbled to think that Maudlen and I will be so remembered.
###########################
12. THROWBACK THURSDAY 1930-2015; Pennsylvania, Minnesota, Arizona, and several states in between.
JOCKS: A FAMILY TRADITION
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| My dad skate-sailing at age 78. |
My Arkansas grandfather Carlton J. Hill was
apparently a pretty tough guy. My dad passed down tales of Granddad and his
brother Roan as youngsters running down deer to put meat on the table;
taking turns dangling each other by the ankles headfirst down the well
for a drink when the water was low; and on one unfortunate occasion,
Granddad—reacting instinctively when his horse bit him and wouldn't let
go—punched the animal between the eyes, knocking it unconscious.
In spite of all this dubious physical prowess, however, Granddad didn’t think much of the sport of football and refused to allow his son Howard, a born athlete, to play it in high school, only relenting in Howard’s senior year.
Ironically, the kid’s prowess in the sport (which was brought to the attention of the Lafayette College coaching staff in Easton, Pennsylvania by my enterprising great-uncle Charles Elkins, purported inventor of the Hires Root Beer Barrel), along with good grades, helped earn him a four-year ride at Lafayette, nevermind it was a Yankee school located in Yankeeland.
My dad always thought it hilarious that he was admitted largely on the strength of his Booneville High School yearbook. Since there were only 26 in his graduating class (a fact Charles never mentioned to the Lafayette admissions board), Dad had been voted captain of the football team, "Best Athlete," "Best Student," "Best All-Around Boy," "Most Popular," etc.
The family legend is that Charles sent a telegram to my dad, who had never expected to go to college, saying that if he could get himself up north within a week, he was in.
So, the story goes, my grandmother packed him a suitcase full of clean underwear, fried chicken and Aunt Tonkie’s famed banana rolls, and Howard sat up in a cheap seat on the train for three days and nights and made the deadline.
Howard became somewhat of a sports legend in his years at Lafayette
(1931-34), as a standout in football, captain of the track team (in which he
participated in five events and set a long-standing collegiate record in the
pole-vault, a skill he learned using a walking staff to propel himself over
Arkansas creeks), and college heavyweight boxing champion.
After college, his main sport became figure skating. Go figure. However, either his example or his genetics started an interesting family chain
reaction.
In spite of all this dubious physical prowess, however, Granddad didn’t think much of the sport of football and refused to allow his son Howard, a born athlete, to play it in high school, only relenting in Howard’s senior year.
Ironically, the kid’s prowess in the sport (which was brought to the attention of the Lafayette College coaching staff in Easton, Pennsylvania by my enterprising great-uncle Charles Elkins, purported inventor of the Hires Root Beer Barrel), along with good grades, helped earn him a four-year ride at Lafayette, nevermind it was a Yankee school located in Yankeeland.
My dad always thought it hilarious that he was admitted largely on the strength of his Booneville High School yearbook. Since there were only 26 in his graduating class (a fact Charles never mentioned to the Lafayette admissions board), Dad had been voted captain of the football team, "Best Athlete," "Best Student," "Best All-Around Boy," "Most Popular," etc.
The family legend is that Charles sent a telegram to my dad, who had never expected to go to college, saying that if he could get himself up north within a week, he was in.
So, the story goes, my grandmother packed him a suitcase full of clean underwear, fried chicken and Aunt Tonkie’s famed banana rolls, and Howard sat up in a cheap seat on the train for three days and nights and made the deadline.
 |
| Yes, this is what they wore to play football in 1931, with the addition of a
flimsy leather helmet (optional in collegiate play until 1939). One of my sister’s boyfriends, trying to suck up to my
dad, once asked him if he’d played in the days of the "Flying Wedge," a brutal,
injurious, notorious and ultimately futile play dreamed up by Harvard coaches
in 1892. That boyfriend wasn’t around for long. |
 |
| Dad cuts a perfect eight. |
 | ||
| My mother also became an enthusiastic skater, and only gave it up at around age 80. |
After a stellar high-school football and track career in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Connecticut (due to family relocations for my dad’s job as a market researcher), David switched to rugby at Brown University, and in real life majored in historical reconstruction and architectural design.
And it's not just the guys: David's daughter Morgan became a quadruple threat: in three-day eventing on horseback (dressage, jumping and cross-country); cross-country skiing; snowboarding; and soccer. She's now a New York City fashion designer.
My sister Sue (shown below zip-lining at age 78), married Phil Richards, a champion collegiate wrestler for Temple University who was inducted into the National Wrestling Hall of Fame in 2010. Phil founded the North Star Financial Companies.
Their son (and Howard’s grandson) Scott Richards was one of the smallest and lightest players for the University of Minnesota Golden Gophers, but so fit and determined that he became known as “Rocky” to his teammates. He became president of North Star Financial.
 |
| Scott |
 | |
| Nicolas Richards at a game with sister Lauren, a volleyball player (below, at right), who also ran track at the regional and state levels in high school. |
Another of Howard’s grandsons, Kip Richards, an all-arounder (skiing, mountain-climbing, sailing, snowboarding, kid-wrangling) has the muscle to lift two small children into the air on a trampoline. He's also the owner of Source Direct Imports.
 |
| Kip with Tre and Cameron |
He's never played knockdown football (and may never) but is seen below winning a cross-country meet, sailing, and scoring in flag football.
 |
| Another of Howard's great-grandaughters, Kyla Church, scales a climbing wall |
Heredity? Environment? Both? Probably.
#####################
13. THROWBACK THURSDAY: Mammy Morgan’s Hill, Pennsylvania, c. 1958.
NAMING THE CAT
Here I am, posing à la Catwoman for my dad with our elegant puss. Her name was:
Akistronscheherazadeammagreezidonnalooziadalvidorrisreccatooccatoccadooma.
Say what?
OK, here’s how it happened. We acquired a grownup cat, black without a single white hair. Did we name her “Blackie?” Oh, no, not in our family.
AKISTRON: This was my dad’s suggestion, after seeing a TV sketch in which the great Sid Caesar made up the word in an attempt to win a Scrabble game. As I recall, Caesar claimed it was part of a tractor hitch.
SCHEHERAZADE: Being a 14-year-old girl, I wanted a name that conjured up the exotic and mysterious nature that I attributed to our kitty. We compromised on both.
AMMAGREEZI, DONNALOOZIA, and DALVIDORRIS: Then my mother remembered that her Great-Aunt Ida Salora Kemmerer Fabel had owned three cats with those names, so, liking the sounds, we tacked them on.
(I later realized that the last two were derived from the 1892-and-many-revivals farce Charley’s Aunt, in which the titular aunt from Brazil is one Donna Lucia d’Alvadorez. We never did figure out the “Ammagreezi.”)
RECCATOOCATOCCADOOMA: This was taken from a comedy routine in those 1950s days when stars were combining family names to create company names, e.g. “Desilu,” for Desi Arnaz and Lucille Ball, or “Gomalco,” for comedian George Gobel, his co-producer O’ Malley and his wife Alice. Other stars combined their children’s names.
In this particular comic sketch, the owner is bragging to another guy about his production company, Reccatoocatoccadooma, named for his offspring. “Gracious!” cries the other man, “How many children do you have?” “Just one,” was the answer, “Little Reccatoocatoccadooma.” My brother and I thought this was pretty hilarious, with predictable results re the cat…
 |
| Aki and I in our Beatnik phase. |
####################
14. THROWBACK THURSDAY: Somewhere in Berkeley, California, May, 1974
A TOUCH OF SPRING…
…And a slice of time. Roger Steffens behind the camera, Tim Page taking photographic aim at Jane Voss, Hoyle Osborne, and Eric Thompson on guitar with Tony Marcus and Suzy Thompson on fiddle.
I’m seated on the right in my homemade hippie swirl skirt (check out Jane’s patchwork number, too), embroidering something as I frequently was in those days (take a look at Tim’s jeans).
And where are we all now?
Jane and Hoyle (former housemates; Jane is a singer, Hoyle a kick-ass piano player) are still together, performing and recording and living in the Southwest.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XtfyP0wwgms (Jane Voss and Hoyle Osborne/Alexander’s Ragtime Band/2016/3:08)
Tony Marcus (shown on the right below) playing fiddle with the Honky Tonk Dreamers. He's played for and recorded with a number of Western, swing, jazz and old-timey bands, including the Lost Weekend Western Swing Band, Cats & Jammers, The Royal Society Jazz Orchestra, Leftover Dreams, and R. Crumb & his Cheap Suit Serenaders. He is also a well-respected guitar instructor.
Eric and Suzy Thompson are also still together and still making music. From their website:
 |
| Suzy and Eric Photo by Irene Young |
http://www.ericandsuzy.com/
Roger Steffens [from Wikipedia] (born June 17, 1942) is a Brooklyn, New York born actor, author, lecturer, editor, reggae archivist, photographer, producer. Roger is perhaps best known for his reggae archives, in particular his archives of Bob Marley.[1] Six rooms of his home in Los Angeles house his archives, which include the world's largest collection of Bob Marley material. Based on these archives Roger lectures internationally with a multi-media presentation called The Life of Bob Marley. Roger's radio career began in New York in 1961, and was co-host of the award-winning Reggae Beat on KCRW in Los Angeles and was syndicated on 130 stations worldwide in the 1980s.
In the past few years, Roger has also become known for his photography work, as a result of The Family Acid Instagram site, curated by his kids Kate and Devon Steffens.
A book of these photos, The Family Acid, going back to the 1960s in Vietnam and through the psychedelic years (which, for Roger, have never stopped) was published in 2014, and numerous gallery shows have ensued, as well as The Family Acid: Jamaica (2017), and The Family Acid: California in 2019.
 |
| Roger with just two of his many books. |
Tim Page had been severely injured in 1969 while working as a photojournalist for Time/LIFE. Not expected to live, much less walk, speak or work again, Tim confounded the medical profession by doing all of the above and more. Since Roger’s photo was taken, he has published nine books of photography and writing, been the subject of three documentary films, and continued to document the people of Southeast Asia, Afghanistan and other countries.
In 2017, he and other Vietnam War journalists were honored with an exhibit “Reporting Vietnam” at the Newseum in Washington DC, where the advertising featured two heartbreakingly young photojournalists (Tim was 19 or 20) taking cover in a trench. Comments on the photos are by Tim’s life partner Mau.
"Here's a few pix from the Newseum's 'Reporting Vietnam' exhibition - who knew that 2 Brits who moved to Australia would end up being the poster boys for Nam war reporting !! The pic was taken by Steve Northup …..Amazing that no one seems to have picked up on the fact of the heritage of these two poster boys !!
apparently they are billboard size all over DC !!"
 |
| Exhibit at the Newseum in Washington DC. |
 |
| Tim Page (R) and actor/journalist Sean Flynn in Vietnam |
 |
 |
| "Martin and Tim were issued their own US Army dog tags; here they are, sitting at the table when the tags arrived" |
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15. THROWBACK THURSDAY: 1970s Dickens Faire
(NOT EVERYBODY GETS TO PLAY A GIANT CHICKEN AT CHRISTMASTIME)
 |
| A boy and his chicken |
 |
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16. THROWBACK THURSDAY: Occidental, Caifornia; 1970s-80s
THE WONDERFUL WIZARD OF MAIN STREET
 |
| “Uncle David” Barsky poses for German tourists in front of his Fun Store in
Occidental, CA, 1993. The young girl on the pointing sign is his daughter. |
On its hilltop surrounded by redwood forests, tiny Occidental had for years been a mecca for gastronomes, with as many as five restaurants at a time located in its two-block downtown. In the era of which I write, it was also developing as a central locus for hip artists, musicians and commune-dwellers, and was fast on its way to becoming a tourist destination.
With the advent of Uncle David in the late 1970s, the bookstore’s poky little interior was gradually transformed into a hippie version of The Old Curiosity Shop, full of the strange, prosaic, wondrous, useful, and weird in the world of novelties, comics, and oddly remaindered merchandise.
Its interior was dim and jumbled and faintly glittering, like a dragon’s hoard. Its smell was a heady mixture of dog (there were always one or two sprawled on the dusty carpet), incense, old books (a tortuous hallway led to a roomful of musty miscellany), and the inside of a bong.
Behind the tiny counter, you might find Uncle David himself, always ready for an off-the-wall political discussion; or his partner, Aunt Janice, who otherwise sat in a small back office doing astrology charts or other peoples’ typing in pre-computer days; or one of the tangle of in-laws, daughters, stepchildren, and friends who always seemed to be coming or going on odd jobs.
None of these people looked or smelled like your average Midwesterner, thus it was always amusing to watch unsuspecting tourists ushering their kids in with cries of “Oh, look! A fun store!”, only to see them come backing out, eyes rolling like spooked ponies, clutching their offspring, who, as often as not, were flailing frantically to break away and get back in. It was a kids’ dream, after all, with Uncle David, the hairiest kid of all, as wizard-in residence.
The Fun Store closed well over a decade ago when Uncle David moved to Santa Fe to market hemp clothing. (He remains a great connoisseur of all things hemp).
He’s been back in Western Sonoma County for some time now, effortlessly hip, genial, offbeat, a friend to all, and greatly in demand as a storyteller in schools and libraries and on his own KOWS-FM radio shows ("Uncle Dave’s Storytime" on Saturdays at 9 am: and "The Real Hippie Hour" Tuesdays at 2pm).
I’ve never heard Uncle David say a bad word about anyone who wasn't a politician, and my heart always lifts a little when I encounter him.
 |
| Uncle David reads to a grandchild. |
Years ago, someone with the idea of creating an Occidental historical pageant (which came to nothing) suggested I write some songs for it. This was the first one:
UNCLE DAVID’S FUN STORE
Well, Uncle David had a store in
Greater Downtown Occidental
What he sold was far from borin’
It catered to the elemental
And occasional need to be
Silly, rude and immature,
You’d get all the help you’d need
At Uncle David’s Fun Store.
Where he sold…
Red clown noses, alien eyeballs,
Whoopee cushions, plastic dog poo,
Rasta wigs and rubber chickens,
Bubble gum and books on voodoo
Controversial bumper stickers,
Barbie dolls and Hobbit lore
You’d spend your money pretty quick in
Uncle David’s Fun Store
And you could…
Get your wood hauled,
Get your stars read,
Get your notes typed by Aunt Janice,
Get into a knock-down drag-out
Argument with Uncle David,
In the process you might find out
What your funny bone was for,
Take a deep breath and blow your mind at
Uncle David’s Fun Store
And then buy…
Vampire teeth and wind-up Wookiees,
“No squirt guns — we don’t sell war toys,”
Noseflutes, drums, kazoos and whistles
“Put it to your lips, you bought it.”
Plastic barf and jelly spiders,
Icky, sticky stuff galore,
You sure could lose your blues inside of
Uncle David’s Fun Store.
Where he sold…
Red clown noses, alien eyeballs,
Whoopee cushions, plastic dog poo,
Rasta wigs and rubber chickens,
Bubble gum and books on voodoo
Controversial bumper stickers,
Barbie dolls and Hobbit lore
Holographic naughty pictures
Lifelike plastic boa constrictors,
Tricks to make you wet your knickers
Giggles, chortles, snorts and snickers
Tickles for your soul and ticker
(And it’s all cheap, no need to dicker)
It’s Uncle David’s Fun Store!
############################
17. THROWBACK THURSDAY: Various Civil War Battlefields, 1863-1915
DISTANT BATTLES,
Or
THE GREAT-GRANDFATHERS GO TO WAR
 |
| Veterans of both sides of the Battle of Gettysburg shake hands over a once-disputed wall on th battlefield; July, 1913 |
 |
| Augustus Roan Hill |
My great-great uncle Micajah Weiss, who enlisted in the Union Army as a teamster at age 65, made it through most of the great battles safe and sound, only to be done in by the 50th anniversary gathering of veterans at the Battle of Gettysburg, where such a fuss was made over him under a hot July sun that, upon returning home, he took to his bed and died some months later at the age of 114.
 |
| Micajah Weiss at the 50th reunion of the Battle of Gettsburg. |
 |
| The final insult: one's name misspelled on one's tombstone. And the wrong dates. |
 |
| The only idea current family members have of what George B. Arnts actually looked like (no known photos) is the description on his Union Army enlistment form. |
George W., a member of the 143rd Pennsylvania Regiment, was seen to be wounded in the ferocious fighting at Gettysburg, but in the wake of the battle, neither he nor his corpse was ever accounted for.
Not, that is, until 1915, when the new owner of a farm on the site of the battle decided to jack up his barn to put stables underneath. There was George W. where he’d crawled to die, in full uniform, his gun by his side, identifiable by the badge on his cap and a photo of his wife and little girl in his pocket.
His daughters, by then women in their sixties, finally got to see their father buried with full military honors over half a century after the bloodiest battle of a bloody war.
War sucks, even in the past.
##################
18. THROWBACK THURSDAY, San Francisco, California, Mid-1970S
POSING FOR SCHONEBERG
One fall day, as I went about my duties as Mistress of Revels at the Northern California Renaissance Pleasure Faire, I was approached by a goateed gentleman wearing a black cape and broad-brimmed hat straight out of a Toulouse-Lautrec poster.
 |
| Schoneberg self-portrait |
 |
 |
| You can compare this Schoneberg portrait with an actual photo of the costume (with Rona Barrett, by Robert Altman). |
 |
| The young Sheldon painted a Larry Rivers-like Picasso fantasy. |
He could do photographic realism, abstract, and everything in between, but at the time I was posing for him, he favored loose, sprawling bohemian-like fantasies in oil pastels.
At least four days a week (at least in the era when I was sitting for him), he would sit down in front of the model of the day and, in several hours’ time, produce a lively drawing that, depending on size, technique, complexity and subject matter, would sell for a generous three-or-four-figure sum.
 |
| As I recall, the dress I was posing in was opaque. Schoneberg never let unwanted details get in his way. |
 |
| Portrait of Menina Schoenberg by her dad. |
Instead of a Paris garret, his “atelier” was the sunny front room of a classy Pacific Heights demi-mansion. Instead of indulging in lusty interludes with lush young models, he was happily married, with two small daughters who, dressed in their private-school uniforms, liked to tiptoe in for a peek unless the door was closed for privacy.
 |
| This
was originally a seated (and clothed) left-hand pose for one of Schoneberg's
three-figure studies. He stopped after the first drawing, and much later
converted it into a nude. |
 |
 |
 |
| ######################### |
19. THROWBACK THURSDAY: San Francisco, 1970 and 1974
MEET THE…
So one day after hours at Rolling Stone, my friend Ben Fong-Torres and I were sitting on a disused desk in the deserted hallway of the mag’s new 3rd Street office, trying to decide where to have dinner, when RS publisher-editor Jann Wenner hove into view, with a pale scruffy-looking fellow in tow.
 | ||
| Jann |
I’m not sure about Ben, but it took a good minute after they were gone for me to figure it out.
 |
| John |
| ||
|
I was aware that George Harrison, as part of his “Dark Horse” tour with Ravi Shankar and others, had done a benefit concert for the then-struggling HAFMC a couple of nights before. I now heard the rumor that he planned to stop by on this particular evening with Founder/Director David Smith for a tour of the Medical Clinic.
There was, however, also a full load of patients to be seen, so I got to work at the front-hall triage desk. Suddenly one of the med techs came running up the stairs from the street two at a time, panting, “He’s gone to the Detox Clinic!!!” (The Medical, Detox, and Women’s Needs Clinics were then in three separate buildings, and not that close together.) Immediately the place emptied of surplus personnel and then some, leaving a skeleton crew to deal with the patient load.
I had finished processing those in line, and was sitting at the desk in the empty hallway filling out forms, when I heard footsteps on the stairs. Trying to keep up with the work, I didn’t raise my head and say, “May I help you?” until the feet stopped in front of the desk, and I looked up into the warm chocolate-brown eyes of Mr. George Harrison.
 |
| George |
“Hello,” he said, smiling. “I’m George. David Smith told me to come up and wait while he found a parking space.” Reader, he was charming; he asked how long I’d been working at the clinic, why I’d decided to volunteer, how many patients were there that night, and other sincere and intelligent questions.
Then Dr. David appeared, whisked GH off for the promised tour (a few rooms and a hallway), and introduced him around. George shook hands with staff members, spoke pleasantly, accepted thanks for the benefit concert, smiled at a roomful of stunned patients, and then the two of them were back down the steps and gone. 12 minutes max.
A bit later, some of the staffers who had left in such a hurry trooped glumly back. “He never showed,” they grumbled.
“You should have stuck around,” I said airily, “He’s got beautiful eyes."
##########################
20. THROWBACK THURSDAY: 1974-2014 in Various Places
FORTY-ODD (AND I DO MEAN ODD) YEARS, AND (HOW MANY?) DEGREES OF PHOTOGRAPHIC SEPARATION.
FORTY-ODD (AND I DO MEAN ODD) YEARS, AND (HOW MANY?) DEGREES OF PHOTOGRAPHIC SEPARATION.
 |
| Roger Steffens and Amie Hill, photographed by Tim Page at a beach near Point Lobos, CA in 1974. |
 |
| Amie Hill and Tim Page, photographed in Berkeley, CA by Roger Steffens, 1974. |
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| Tim Page photographed by Roger Steffens during a 1999 telephone reunion with Amie Hill, Los Angeles, CA |
 | |
| Devon Steffens and Tim Page, photographed by Roger Steffens, 1999, Los Angeles, CA. |
 |
| Tim Page, in an intentional double-exposure photograph taken in Death Valley by
Roger Steffens in 1977, and rediscovered c. 2013 by Devon Steffens, who
digitized it for the all-Steffens photo book and Instagram site The Family Acid (53.4k followers and climbing). |
 |
| Roger Steffens and Keith Richards, photographed by Devon Steffens in Roger’s Los Angeles music archives c. 2013. |
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| Sir Mick Jagger, photographed in Australia in 2014 by Tim Page. |
 |
| Sir Mick preparing to photograph Tim Page, by Tim Page. |
Sir Mick and Tim Page (with unidentified onlooker), photographed comparing
teeny-weenies by Tim’s love-and-life-partner Marianne (“Mau”) Harris. She
wrote:“We went to see the Stones—loved it. Then Mick Jagger wanted to meet Tim! (Life with Page—one minute rearranging his sock drawer, next sitting next to Mick for dinner). Not sure what they are comparing in this one—lenses?? Didn't want to take pictures - till Mick said 'I gotta get a picture of Tim Page!’”
 |
| Tim Page by Mau, who sent these photos to Roger Steffens, who sent them to Amie Hill... |
...who connected the dots.
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
More to Come...
ALL MY BLOGS
ALL MY BLOGS TO DATE
MEMOIRS (This is not as daunting as it looks.
Each section contains 20 short essays, ranging in length from a few paragraphs
to a few pages. Great bathroom reading.
They’re not in sequential order, so one can start
anywhere.)
NOTE: If you prefer to read these on paper, you
can highlight/copy/paste into a Word doc and print them out, (preferably
two-sided or on the unused side of standard-sized paper).
THROWBACK THURSDAYS & OTHER ADVENTURES: Part
One
THROWBACK THURSDAYS & OTHER ADVENTURES: Part
Two
THROWBACK THURSDAYS & OTHER ADVENTURES: Part
Three
THROWBACK THURSDAYS & OTHER ADVENTURES: Part Four
THROWBACK THURSDAYS & OTHER ADVENTURES: Part Five
THROWBACK THURSDAYS & OTHER ADVENTURES: Part
Six
NEW! THROWBACK
THURSDAYS & OTHER ADVENTURES: Part Seven
NEW! THROWBACK
THURSDAYS & OTHER ADVENTURES: Part Eight
NEWEST! THROWBACK
THURSDAYS & OTHER ADVENTURES: Part Nine
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ILLUSTRATED ADVENTURES IN VERSE
NEW! FLYING TIME; OR, THE WINGS
OF KAYLIN SUE
(2020)
(38 lines, 17 illustrations)
TRE & THE ELECTRO-OMNIVOROUS GOO
(2018)
(160 lines, 26 illustrations)
DRACO& CAMERON
(2017)
http://dracoandcameron.blogspot.com/ (36
lines, 18 illustrations)
CHRISTINA SUSANNA
(1984/2017)
https://christinasusanna.blogspot.com/ (168
lines, 18 illustrations)
OBSCURELY ALPHABETICAL & D IS FOR DYLAN
(2017) (1985)
https://obscurelyalphabetical.blogspot.com/ (41
lines, 8 illustrations)
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ARTWORK
AMIE HILL: CALLIGRAPHY & DRAWINGS
AMIE HILL: COLLAGES 1https://amiehillcollages1.blogspot.com/
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LIBERA HISTORICAL TIMELINE (2007-PRESENT)
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