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    In the Time of My Life: Selected Writings
    In the Time of My Life: Selected Writings
    In the Time of My Life: Selected Writings
    Ebook510 pages7 hours

    In the Time of My Life: Selected Writings

    By Joseph Sutton

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    About this ebook

    This book is an intriguing anthology of stories and chapters extracted from Joseph Sutton’s three novels, three short story collections, a memoir and a baseball book. Put all these stories and chapters together and what you have, after fifty years of writing, is a mother lode of revelations, insights, wisdom and humor from the pen of Joseph Sutton. There are key excerpts from Sutton's three novels. MORNING PAGES: THE ALMOST TRUE STORY OF MY LIFE is about a writer finding a way to break out of a writer's block. A CLASS OF LEADERS shows how a high school teacher empowers his inner-city students by giving them a chance to teach their peers. HIGHWAY SAILOR: A ROLLICKING AMERICAN JOURNEY tells the story of a man hitting the road in his old VW bus in search of himself and America. Of the three story collections, THE IMMORTAL MOUTH AND OTHER STORIES is derived from the first half of Sutton’s fifty-year writing career. THE BAR OF SOAP AND OTHER STORIES comes from the second half of his writing career. THE LIFE AND DEATH OF ABRAHAM MASSRY AND OTHER STORIES deals with Sutton's Syrian Jewish roots. The memoir, FATHER AND SON: THIRTY YEARS OF GROWING UP TOGETHER, is a record of Sutton's relationship with his son Ray from the time he was born to Ray's thirtieth year. SAN FRANCISCO GIANTS: A FAN'S JOURNAL 2010, 2012, 2014 chronicles the always underdog Giants winning three World Series championships in a span of five years.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherJoseph Sutton
    Release dateNov 2, 2019
    ISBN9780463353646
    In the Time of My Life: Selected Writings
    Author

    Joseph Sutton

    Joseph Sutton was born in Brooklyn and raised in Hollywood. He played football at the University of Oregon and graduated with a degree in philosophy. He earned a teaching credential and a degree in history at Cal State University Los Angeles and taught high school history and English for many years. Sutton, who has been writing for more than 50 years, has published over two dozen books. His essays and short stories have appeared in numerous national magazines and journals. He lives in San Francisco with his wife Joan.

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      Book preview

      In the Time of My Life - Joseph Sutton

      IN THE TIME OF MY LIFE

      Selected Writings

      by

      Joseph Sutton

      Copyright by Joseph Sutton

      Smashwords Edition, License Notes

      This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

      CONTENTS

      INTRODUCTORY NOTES

      A Tribute to William Saroyan

      Why I Write

      The Story of My Books

      MORNING PAGES: The Almost True Story of My Life

      Day 1 – Morning Pages

      Day 19 – Down in the Dumps

      Day 21 – Synchronicity

      Day 24 – Waaaaaaaaaa!

      Day 29 – Dedicated to All the Unknown Artists in the World

      Day 35 – Back, Back, Back

      Day 40 – The Haircut

      Day 41 – In the Garden of Life, Kablooey

      Day 45 – Meeting Lois Lane

      Day 54 – The Royal Flush

      Day 59 – Everything Has a Reason

      Day 71 – Wham-Bam-Oh-Man

      Day 79 – The Man with Hope in His Heart

      THE IMMORTAL MOUTH AND OTHER STORIES

      The Immortal Mouth

      Family Traits

      The Baby

      The Red Ruby

      The Silver Moon

      The Fourth Stringer

      The Running Back vs. the Ramming Sheep

      Paul Milochek’s Struggle with His Friend Dmitri and the Sea

      Hollywood Story

      Bedtime Story

      Jose Gecko and Son

      THE BAR OF SOAP AND OTHER STORIES

      My Across the Street Neighbor, the Ex-Marine

      The Greatest Power of Them All

      The Bar of Soap

      The Grand Experiment

      The Honing of an Athlete

      The Bruce Gardner Story

      My Almost First Woman

      The Burden of Guilt

      Sam’s Story

      I’ll Never Lose Faith

      Mrs. IBM—The Great Controller

      Pickpocketed in Paris

      Fog, the Cop, and Don

      The Meaning of Life

      Oh Mercy, Mercy, Me

      THE LIFE AND DEATH OF ABRAHAM MASSRY AND OTHER STORIES

      Introduction

      The Life and Death of Abraham Massry

      At the Store

      My Mom

      Bar Mitzvah Boy

      Chuck’s Story

      My Brother Charles

      A Double-Edged Sword

      A CLASS OF LEADERS

      Chapter 4 – First Period Class

      Chapter 9 – The Teacher

      Chapter 10 – The Black Mafia

      Chapter 11 – Dis Ain’t No Small Matter

      Chapter 12 – Hoy

      Chapter 14 – A Short Lesson on How to Get in Trouble

      Chapter 15 – With a Little Help from My Friends

      Chapter 16 – Two Against All

      Chapter 18 – A Day in the Life

      Chapter 23 – Fighting Cancer with an Aspirin

      Chapter 28 – Grades

      HIGHWAY SAILOR: A Rollicking American Journey

      Chapter 16 – Ándale, Ándale

      Chapter 17 – The Age of Uncertainty

      Chapter 19 – Ted and Alice

      Chapter 22 – Touch and Go

      Chapter 23 – Blue vs. Gray

      Chapter 25 – Let Us Now Praise Famous Men

      Chapter 26 – A Real Southern Town

      Chapter 29 – The American Way

      Chapter 30 – Two of a Kind

      Chapter 31 – Jeannie with the Light Brown Hair

      Chapter 32 – The Road

      Chapter 33 – The Two Jakes

      Chapter 37 – The Almost Perfect Match

      Chapter 38 – Westward Ho!

      FATHER AND SON: Thirty Years of Growing Up Together

      February 8, 1981 – Birth

      August 11, 1982 – A Father and His Son

      October 19, 1987 – The Day My Son Learned to Read

      May 9, 1991 – Dad, I’m Nervous

      June 5, 1991 – The Gipper Speech

      May 10, 1995 – What Does It Take to Be a Dad Today?

      February 7, 1996 – The Brass Ring

      February 7, 1999 – Letter to My Son

      August 26, 2000 – I Choked Up

      March 1, 2003 – To Life, to Life, L’Chaim

      June 16, 2011 – An Altruistic Path

      SAN FRANCISCO GIANTS: A Fan’s Journal 2010, 2012, 2014

      2010

      Sunday, October 3, 2010 – Giants Win West Division

      Saturday, October 23, 2010 – National League Championship Series, Game 6

      Wednesday, November 3, 2010 – World Series, Game 5 and Victory Parade

      2012

      Wednesday, June 13, 2012 – Matt Cain’s Perfect Game

      Monday, October 22, 2012 – National League Championship Series, Game 7

      Wednesday, October 24, 2012 – World Series, Game 1

      Sunday, October 28, 2012 – World Series, Game 4

      2014

      Saturday, October 4, 2014 – National League Division Series, Game 2

      Thursday, October 16, 2014 – National League Championship Series, Game 5

      Wednesday, October 29, 2014 – World Series, Game 7

      OTHER BOOKS BY JOSEPH SUTTON

      BIOGRAPHY

      CONTACT

      INTRODUCTORY NOTES

      A Tribute to William Saroyan

      The writer William Saroyan (1908-1981) has had a great influence on me. The title of my book is a testament to that, since it’s taken from the opening line of The Time of Your Life, his most famous play, In the time of your life, live...

      Saroyan was an American of Armenian descent who didn’t hesitate to write about his heritage. He gave me the courage to write about my Syrian Jewish heritage. He also wrote mainly from his own experience, the way I do.

      I met Saroyan twice in my life. In our first meeting, I knocked on his door in Fresno; the second time was when I accidentally ran into him outside a produce market in San Francisco. I’ll never forget the advice he gave me during our first meeting: Write for yourself, he said. But first, you have to make sure you like what you’re writing and that it’s interesting.

      I’ve given my all to live up to those words.

      Why I Write

      When I recently spoke to a group of high school students about writing, a girl asked me, Why did you choose to be a writer?

      My answer to her was, I chose to be a writer because I wanted to write about the memorable experiences in my life, and no one knows more about my life than me.

      There are more reasons why I write. I write to find out what I’m thinking, feeling, imagining. I write to find out where I’m headed and where the human race is headed. I write to try to make sense of the world. I write to keep my brain active and healthy. I write to try to explain my existence on Earth and in the universe. I write to extol life, to show how fortunate most of us are to be alive and kicking. I write to be serious, playful, insightful. I write to entertain. I write to inform. I write for future generations to read my words. I write to ponder the past and foresee the future. I write to inspire and influence others. I write because I want to, need to, and have to. I write, therefore I am.

      The Story of My Books

      I moved from Los Angeles to Berkeley to begin my writing career and began writing A Class of Leaders on my 29th birthday, August 20, 1969. It was based on my experience as a teacher at Fremont High School in Los Angeles, an inner city school that, at the time, was made up of 99% black students. After I finished A Class of Leaders and started sending it out (with no luck), my four-year relationship with the woman I was living with ended. I was so distraught over the breakup that I packed all my possessions into my VW bus and headed back to Los Angeles and my parents’ house on New Year’s Day 1974. A month after I arrived, my father passed away. I hit the highways of America in my ten-year-old VW bus to overcome the two losses in my life. My odyssey took place during the Nixon Watergate scandal. After spending five months on the road, I settled in Portland, Oregon, and started writing my second novel, Highway Sailor: A Rollicking American Journey.

      About halfway through Highway Sailor, I moved to San Francisco where I met my future wife Joan Bransten. Two years after getting married, we started a family. I returned to teaching full-time again but never gave up writing and trying to get my books into print. I kept sending out A Class of Leaders, Highway Sailor, and my story collection The Immortal Mouth and Other Stories but was turned down dozens and dozens of times.

      One day, in 1996, I bumped into Heidi Hornberger, a real estate agent who also happened to be a sculptress. We got to talking about my being stuck in my writing and she advised me to read Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way. I bought the book and followed Cameron’s basic principle of breaking out of a writer’s block by writing three pages as fast as possible first thing in the morning for three months. And what gushed out of me in that three months turned out to be the gist of my third novel, Morning Pages: The Almost True Story of My Life.

      I hustled Morning Pages for more than a year and finally found a publisher in 1999, who also accepted my story collection The Immortal Mouth and Other Stories. I was now an honest to God published writer. Oh, sure, over the years I had published short stories in a variety of magazines, but my publisher was the first to take a chance on two of my books.

      Along with selections from Morning Pages, The Immortal Mouth and Other Stories, A Class of Leaders, and Highway Sailor is another story collection of mine, The Bar of Soap and Other Stories. The Life and Death of Abraham Massry and Other Stories deals with my Syrian Jewish roots from boyhood to manhood. I’ve also chosen selections from two non-fiction books. Father and Son: Thirty Years of Growing Up Together chronicles my relationship with my son Ray as he grew from an infant into a man. And since I’m a baseball fan, I wrote San Francisco Giants: A Fan’s Journal 2010, 2012, 2014, about the Giants winning three World Series titles within a span of five years.

      All told, I’ve selected my best stories and chapters from eight of my published books. I hope you enjoy In the Time of My Life.

      Joseph Sutton

      2019

      MORNING PAGES: THE ALMOST TRUE STORY OF MY LIFE

      Writer Ben Halaby finds a way to break out of a writer’s block.

      Day 1 - Morning Pages

      I’m starting my first day of waking up in the morning and coming downstairs to my office to write my morning pages. I’m not supposed to let my pen leave the surface of this spiral notebook until I fill up three pages. I’m not supposed to worry about the quality of words, only the quantity. I’m to let the words gush out of me as if I were the Great Creator’s stenographer. I’m to write as fast as I can without thinking, loosening my subconscious from the lower depths so it can rise to the top.

      I’m reading Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way, a book about creativity. It’s supposed to help any type of artist to break out of a block and get the creative juices flowing again. It’s supposed to resuscitate the artist’s faith in himself and in the Great Creator—to allow the Creator’s words to go through your arm, out of your pen, and onto a piece of paper.

      I’ve heard artists such as writer William Saroyan and my storyteller wife June say, The words are already there; I’m just a conduit for putting them down on paper or telling a story to kids. In a similar vein, I once asked my brother Charles’ friend, Clancy Sigal, how he wrote. His answer was a question thrown back at me: What were you thinking when you ran with the football and scored touchdowns?

      I wasn’t thinking, I told him, it just came naturally.

      It’s April Fool’s Day, 1996. June and I had our first date exactly nineteen years ago to the day. We ate dinner at a Japanese restaurant in San Francisco’s Mission District. After dinner, we walked to the Roxie Theater on 16th and Valencia to watch a John Cassavetes movie. As we were standing in the long line for tickets I put my arm around her to keep her warm. She later confessed, Your body’s warmth was one of the reasons I fell in love with you. When we got to the ticket window we were told the only seats available were in the front row.

      We weren’t the front-row-seat type, so we crossed the street to a Chinese restaurant, where we spent the next two hours finding out about each other. Our waiter, a Mao Zedong look-alike, kept serving us the most watered-down coffee in the world. Forget the coffee; June and I were connecting on all cylinders.

      What made me start these morning pages today? It has to do with spending yesterday with my friends Jerry Rishky and Alan Holliday in Mill Valley. We spent most of the day watching part of a basketball game at Alan’s bachelor pad, taking a few tokes off a joint, going for a walk, conversing with people on the street that Alan knew and trying to come up with a name for the three of us. We couldn’t decide whether to call ourselves The Odd Trio, The Odd Triple, Trips are Better, or The Post Trio.

      Alan brought up the idea of driving to an open house at a condo owned by a woman friend. That’s when the turning point of the day came for me: Heidi Hornberger was there. She was the real estate agent tending the open house. What a godsend she was! She was like an angel. Maybe she was an angel. When we walked in, we found her sitting on a couch gluing her fantasy photos onto folded cards. Somehow Heidi and I started talking about Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way and how it helped her overcome her artist’s block. I was familiar with the name of the book and paid close attention to what she was saying. Read the book as if you’re taking a course in college. If you follow the instructions for three months you’ll become your true artist–self again.

      Heidi, angel that she was, gave each of us one of her beautiful cards before we left. I wrote something to June in it this morning, about spending another nineteen years together. She loved it.

      Day 19 - Down in the Dumps

      I’m down on myself today. I’m not producing anything but these morning pages. I’ve got to start creating some stories. Boy, am I feeling down in the dumps. Speaking of dumps, one day when our son Ray was a baby I was literally down in the dumps.

      June phoned me at school one day when Ray was a little over a year old. Raymond’s diapers are missing, she cried. The diaper man couldn’t find the diaper bag. The garbage people probably picked it up. The diaper man said we have to pay a hundred dollars to replace the lost diapers. What are we going to do, Ben?

      Call the garbage people to see if we can get the diapers back?

      Ten minutes later she called back. The garbage people found the bag of diapers! They said I can go down to the dump and pick it up—truck 6A will be waiting for me. What should I do, Ben? Raymond’s taking his nap now and they told me to be there right away.

      Should I go or not? I thought. A hundred dollars is a lot of money. Anyway, no wife and baby of mine are going down to a filthy dump to pick up a bag of wet, dirty diapers.

      I zoomed on down to the city dump, which is next door to Candlestick Park. I parked outside a huge yard filled with red and white garbage trucks. I ran as fast as my legs could carry me, expecting to find truck 6A, pick up the diapers, and hurry back to work. The man at the checkpoint said the truck was waiting for me up the hill and around the bend. As I started up the hill, a man in a green pickup truck, the supervisor, drove up and asked, Are you the guy who’s looking for the bag of diapers?

      Yeah, I said, feeling a little embarrassed. Diapers? Who the hell cares about diapers? People rush to the dump to look for antiques or diamonds, not diapers.

      The dump site was a cavernous structure with a roof overhead. Two guys jumped out of truck 6A when the supervisor and I arrived. One guy was tall and solidly built, the other was short and lean. I was set to grab the diapers, thank the men, and be on my way. But it wasn’t to be.

      We’ll empty the garbage here, said the supervisor, pointing to the cement floor we were standing on and not the enormous dump twenty feet below. It’ll cost you a hundred dollars to get someone to sweep the garbage into the dump.

      I told him, I’ll sweep the garbage into the dump myself.

      Tall and Short looked at each other and laughed.

      You don’t know what you’re saying, the supervisor said.

      But I don’t have a hundred dollars on me. And now I don’t even know if the diapers are in the load.

      I’m pretty sure I picked them up this morning, said the short fellow. I couldn’t figure out why someone would leave a bag of diapers for garbage.

      I asked the supervisor, Can’t you drop the load in the dump and I’ll look for the bag down there?

      No one’s allowed down there, he replied adamantly, because down there was where the garbage trucks were emptying their gargantuan loads. And garbage is really garbage at the dump; there are all kinds of things you can squish into or cut yourself with, and God only knows what else can happen.

      Look, said the supervisor, I’ll charge the hundred dollars to your garbage bill.

      Imagine, a hundred dollars just to see if a bag of diapers had been picked up! I was struck dumb. Sprinklers were spraying water lightly from the tall ceiling above. It was dusty, dirty, dank and the smell, oh, the smell—it was the city dump! There was an endless flow of trucks driving in, emptying their loads and driving out, while two huge Caterpillar tractors were going back and forth leveling the garbage.

      Come on, I heard the tall fellow say, it won’t take long.

      You help the guy, griped the short fellow. I’m finished for the day. We’ve been up since three o’clock. I’m tired. It’s time to go home.

      OK by me, said Tall. I’ll help the guy myself.

      You’re crazy, man, said Short. You can’t do that.

      Yeah, I’m crazy, said Tall, but I know how it is when a guy has kids—every penny counts.

      You win, said Short. You know I’m not going to let you do it alone.

      Forget the hundred bucks, Tall told the supervisor.

      It’s nice of these guys to help out, I thought, but why are they making such a big deal out of sweeping some garbage into the dump?

      The plan was to let a little garbage out at a time and check for the diaper bag. The short guy tilted the truck bed back and moved the truck forward a little as the tall fellow and I searched for the white plastic bag. No dice. A second load was let out. Nothing. A third load. That’s when the tall guy spied the white bag of diapers. There were at least twenty-five other white plastic bags in that monstrous pile on the ground, but this tall, smiling fellow found the treasure that I so desperately sought.

      The next order of business was to get the garbage into the dump. It was piled two to three feet high and covered an area equivalent to a medium-sized bedroom. Each of us had a shovel, and we began chopping into the sides of the pile and scraping it into the dump. That’s when I realized why Tall and Short had their little disagreement. The garbage was like lead and it took every ounce of energy to move it. There were all kinds of things in that garbage heap and it made me sick to my stomach to look at it. But I wanted to show the two men how indebted I was to them by working doubly fast so as to lighten their load a bit. If it wasn’t for me, they would’ve been sitting in an easy chair at home with a bottle of beer in hand. Meanwhile, off to the side of the garbage pile sat the lonely white plastic bag filled with my son’s soiled diapers.

      Another man, after unloading his truck, joined us of his own accord to get that ooey, gooey, smelly, slimy garbage down into the dump. He worked as hard as the three of us, and work it was. I was huffing and puffing, groaning and sweating, and didn’t let up for one second. Those three men were doing something they didn’t have to do. They were just helping another human being, and not one of them uttered a word of complaint.

      It took us close to an hour to get that mess into the dump. I was sweaty and exhausted. I felt as if I had played two football games against the 49ers that day. Before I knew it, the guy who had joined us jumped into his truck to drive off. I quickly brought out my wallet to offer him a tip, but he refused it and drove off.

      I offered Tall and Short all the money I had, thirty dollars, but they too declined.

      What kind of people are these garbage guys? I wondered.

      I grabbed Ray’s diapers and was about to race back to my car, when the tall fellow, the guy to whom I was most indebted, offered me a ride in his pickup truck.

      I couldn’t stop thanking him for what he’d done. When he dropped me off, I told him with every ounce of sincerity in me, You guys are saints. That’s what you are, true saints. I’m going to leave you some cold beer next week and every week after that.

      Forget the beer, he said. Any kind of soft drink’ll do fine.

      Day 21 - Synchronicity

      I read an article in the paper about synchronicity last night. Ever since I began reading Julia Cameron’s book, I’ve been alert to this concept. She says to keep a constant eye out for those moments when something accidental happens that seems planned or arranged. A perfect example of that occurred to me when I lived in Berkeley in the early seventies.

      Eddie Cadenasso, a friend of mine at the time, asked me on the phone one night, Ben, do you think you can make it to my trial next month? I need some moral support.

      Eddie had been making a left turn one day in San Francisco, and he ran over an old man and killed him. He wasn’t high on drugs, he wasn’t drunk, nor did he run a red light. Eddie hit the old man because the angle of the late afternoon sun blinded his vision.

      I told him I would try to be at his trial, but I really wasn’t intending to go. The trial would take place in San Francisco and it was inconvenient for me to cross the Bay. I didn’t even write down the time, date or address.

      However, in the early ’70s I attended trials at the courthouses in Berkeley and Oakland to observe our judicial system in action. It was like watching a stage play for free. One day I happened to be in San Francisco with some time on my hands, so I walked into a building in the Civic Center and looked at the directory on the wall. It listed six floors of courtrooms. I entered the elevator and randomly pushed the button for I don’t know what floor it was.

      When I got out of the elevator, I walked down a quiet corridor to see if any trials were in session. I peered through the window panel of the first courtroom I came to. Empty. I walked farther down the hallway until I found a courtroom with people in it. I opened the door, walked in with my head down so as not to see any faces turning around to look at me, and sat in the back row. I looked up. And who did I see sitting on the witness stand? None other than Eddie Cadenasso. Our eyes met and he gave me a slight wave of his hand.

      Eddie was found innocent that day.

      I never told him what led me to his trial that day. After all, I didn’t know myself.

      Day 24 - Waaaaaaaaaa!

      I’m at my Cousin Vic’s house in Hollywood. I got here in my 1985 Toyota station wagon. I had a little scare coming down Interstate 5: my radiator almost blew. Luckily, I pulled into a gas station in the town of Grapevine (no houses, just five or six gas stations) where a very decent Palestinian mechanic happened to be working. Grapevine is a magnet for cars with radiator problems. People drive I-5 for long stretches at a time where gas stations are sometimes forty miles apart. So when it’s hot outside and a car is going 65, 70, 80 miles an hour for three to five hours, the radiator tends to overheat if it’s low on coolant or has a leak.

      I found out yesterday my radiator has a leak. Thank goodness I found out just before I was about to ascend the steep, dreaded Grapevine, a driver’s nightmare in hot weather. The wonderful mechanic I happened upon put some powder in the radiator to stop the leak. He told me, rolling his r’s, You betterr go to rradiatorr shop as soon as you get to Los Angeles. He could have charged me an arm and a leg for a new radiator if he’d wanted to, but as I said, the guy was a very decent fellow.

      I’m an American Syrian Jew. My father came from Aleppo, Syria, like my mother’s parents, when he was 20 years old. My mother was born in Brooklyn. Out of the union of Raymond and Jeannette Halaby came six boys—Charles, David, Bob, Maurice, me, and Albert. Charles died of a heart attack at the age of sixty-three in 1991. We have his son Ray, though, and his daughter Jeannette. There are five Rays still living: Ray Charles, Ray David, Ray Maurice, Ray Ben and Ray Albert. Bob, the actor, never married. It’s a Syrian Jewish custom, possibly a Mediterranean custom, to name the first-born son or daughter after the father’s father or mother. Shaul (Charles in English) was my father’s father’s name. My parents’ second son, David, was named after my mother’s father. My parents had a daughter, Luna, who died of pneumonia at the age of five. She was named after my paternal grandmother. My mother’s mother was named Merhaba, which when anglicized is Mary.

      My poor mother! After having her second son David and then seeing the death of her only daughter, she yearned for a girl to take Luna’s place. She wanted a girl to kiss, to hold, to teach—to become another her. When she gave birth to me—her fifth son—she didn’t like me. This is what she told me many years ago. It was quite shocking to hear.

      She said all she could do was pine for the past: Oh, Luna, she would cry to her dead daughter. Luna, my girl, how beautiful and well behaved you were. You were so delicate and smart. If only Ben were born a girl like you! I can’t like him. I know it’s not his fault, I just can’t like him. I’ll take care of him, of course, but he’ll have to rely on himself more than any of the other boys. It’s a shame, too, because he’s such a beautiful baby. Oh, Luna, why did you have to leave me?

      According to my mother, two weeks after I was born she placed me in the middle of her and Dad’s double bed, then went into the kitchen to prepare dinner. I started crying, but she ignored me. I kept crying and she still refused to come. In my fury, I must have rolled over onto my stomach. Crying, rocking back and forth on my belly, pushing my little feet into the thick bedspread, I slowly inched toward the edge of the bed. Two and a half feet below was a polished hardwood floor. I cried as hard and loud as I could. Waaaa!

      I had to be heard. Waaaa!

      My mother said to herself, He’ll just have to wait till I’m finished cooking.

      What goes on in a two-week old baby’s mind when he needs attention? It might have gone something like this:

      "Why doesn’t she listen to me? Is she tired? No, no, she’s not tired, she’s a strong woman. Does she hate me? Waaaaa! I’m just a tiny baby, Mom. I need your breast, your warmth, your love. Waaaaaa! Come to me, Mom. Don’t hate me, love me! I know I’m helpless now, but don’t worry, I’ll show you what I can do when I grow up. Waaaaaaa! I’ll grow up fast for you, Mom. You won’t have to give me the same attention you’ve given my brothers. But now I need a dry diaper and your sweet, warm milk. Please, come to me."

      After getting some air into my small lungs, I let out with a mighty WAAAAAAAA!

      By now I was at the edge of the bed. Down, down, down I fell.

      Suddenly, Mom told me, she didn’t hear me crying any longer. She slowly moved toward the bedroom and listened for a sound.

      Strange, she thought, one minute he’s crying harder than ever, and the next, silence.

      She hurried to the bedroom. When she didn’t see me on the bed she froze. She wanted to scream, but just as in a nightmare, she couldn’t. She held her breath as she went around to the other side of the bed where she found me on the floor.

      I let out a colossal WAAAAAAAAA!

      She said that after she picked me up, she fell in love with me.

      Day 29 - Dedicated to All the Unknown Artists in the World

      A good friend of mine, Gale Kaplan, turned 50 yesterday. She refuses to give up smoking even though she always has a hacking cough. Her short, thick, white hair looks like a tuft of grass to me.

      Gale and I met at the San Francisco Writers’ Workshop many years ago. She writes short, funny, thought-provoking essays about the everyday things in life that we all do but other writers don’t write about, such as farting, picking our noses, killing spiders, and not being able to get to a bathroom on time.

      Gale is a renegade, a rebel, a one-of-a-kind human being. She once stated her philosophy to me: Rules are made to be broken. Break them.

      Every time I read or hear one of her acerbic essays I get excited. Give me five or ten of your pieces and I’ll help you find an agent, I tell her. Or maybe I’ll say, Gale, I think your writing would go great in such and such a magazine or newspaper. Give me one or two pieces and I’ll send them out for you.

      All I get back, in that Minneapolis-bred monotone, is, No, Ben, I don’t want to be published.

      But you’re a writer, Gale. You’re constantly revising your work to make it better. That’s what professional writers do. Why don’t you want to be published?

      I’m not ready yet.

      When will you be ready?

      I don’t know. Maybe never.

      Your writing has to be read. Come on, Gale, give me something so you can see your name in print.

      No, Ben. Creating is all that matters to me. After I’m finished with a piece, it means nothing to me.

      Gale is absolutely right—and wrong. Creating means living in the present. It’s the greatest feeling there is for a writer, or any other type of artist, when all the pistons are pumping smoothly. That’s what it’s all about, isn’t it? An artist’s satisfaction should come from creating something, not from having to seek recognition for it. That’s the ideal.

      On the other hand, Gale’s a fool to shy away from publication. Her writing can inform, inspire, and amuse. Plus, writing is work—she should be paid for her labor.

      Coaxing her to get her art into a public forum is like trying to change a cold, foggy summer day in San Francisco into a warm, sunny day—impossible.

      I wonder how many other talented, unknown artists there are in the world? Probably a huge number. What a shame it is that their work goes unrecognized! On the other hand, maybe we artists would be better off if we thought more like Gale Kaplan instead of struggling to seek fame and fortune in a very competitive world.

      Day 35 - Back, Back, Back

      I watched Stalag 17 on TV last night. William Holden won an Oscar for his performance in the film, and rightly so. It was the morning after he won his Oscar in March 1953 that I saw him. I was standing on the corner of Highland and Sunset Boulevard trying to hitch a ride to Bancroft Junior High when our eyes met. He was behind the wheel of a big black, four-door Cadillac that had stopped at a red light. I gave him a pronounced gesture with my right thumb to see if he was going down Highland, but he shook his head and pointed right, meaning he was turning on Sunset. William Holden, probably the most famous man in the United States that morning, wearing a crumpled tuxedo shirt (he must have stayed up and celebrated the whole evening), acknowledged me!

      My mind won’t leave the fifties. I see myself and Tony Burton(i) riding our bikes around the entrance of Bancroft talking about girls, dreaming of them. Tony (half Irish, half Italian, who changed his name according to the ethnicity he felt at the moment) set us up after school one day with a classmate of ours, Lila Conforti. There we were, the three of us, lying on a large, flattened cardboard box that we laid out on the dirt under Tony’s apartment building on Fairfax just below Fountain. It was the first time in my life that I ever felt a girl’s breasts. Lila, who wouldn’t take her bra off for us, had big ones, too.

      I wonder what was going on in Lila’s mind that day? Was she in a state of bliss as we fondled her magnificent breasts? Or was she in hell trying to ward off four hands that were trying to touch the core of her body?

      Tony was an idea man, an instigator. It was his idea for the two of us to steal a car one Sunday when we were fourteen. I remember we started walking east on Fountain, checking every car we passed for a key in its ignition. We finally found what we were looking for on Fountain near La Brea. We jumped in and drove off.

      I didn’t enjoy that little escapade. I spent the whole time wiping our fingerprints off everything we touched while Tony did the driving.

      My memory won’t leave my junior high school days. It’s going back, back, back, as ESPN’s Chris Berman would say, to Bancroft’s 23rd annual All-Star baseball game in June of 1955. Every student and teacher was in attendance that day. And there I was, standing at home plate in the first inning, my adrenaline rushing, when Chuck Lewman wound up and threw the ball, which looked like a balloon to me. My bat met the ball squarely. The ball went higher and farther than any I’d ever hit. It was near the foul line, though. I stood at home plate just like Carlton Fisk of the Boston Red Sox did when he hit a home run close to the foul line in the 1975 World Series against the Cincinnati Reds. I watched the ball’s flight, motioning and pleading for it to stay fair, just

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