comicbooks

My passions for reading and drawing began with my older brother’s comic books. Those colorful magazines obsessed me as a child and, eager to keep abreast of my heroes’ exploits, I struggled to increase my vocabulary with each issue. My brother also loved to draw and plan things on paper and, using the comics as references, I mimicked him as soon as I could make marks. My Mighty Mouses and Plutos were, for a 4 yr old, impeccable. Later on I drew Superman and Alfred E. Newman, eventually turning to study Degas and Michelangelo - but that was all ahead of me in some distant hazy future place. During naptime, my caped teddy bear (a hand towel safety-pinned around his neck) flew above my bed swooping down to rescue Raggedy Ann or some other hapless victim. During the long days while my brother was at school, I often went down the street to a friend of my mother’s house (probably so she could watch me while my Mom was busy with babies and whatever Moms did). There I followed Mary Jane around, watching her garden, do laundry, can peaches, and magically paint and fire pottery in her basement studio. I still have a plate that I painted there when I was 5 – (Mary Jane helped me out with my signature.) When we had finished in the basement, I’d go upstairs and sit with her elderly mother while Mary Jane was busy out in the yard. Her mother was confined to her bed upstairs - at least I never remembered seeing her anywhere but there in the bed. In the bathroom across the hall was the great repository of comics. The drawers in there were stuffed to the point where they could barely close without crinkling up the covers - it was the mother lode! Now Mary Jane’s daughters were older than me and had different tastes in comics, so there was very little overlapping in selections. They had Betty and Veronica, Sluggo and Nancy and Little Lulu and several of those crime and gore types with plots too dark and complex for my young mind. I studied them all – the sacred texts of my youth - ravenously thumbing through little Lulus, staving off my hunger for the next issue of Mighty Mouse or Uncle Scrooge to come out. I was a child of the Disney era. I knew the Mickey Mouse Club song by heart and sang along everyday - especially liking Wednesday (‘anything can happen’ day) and Round-up Fridays, where they danced around wearing those horse costumes with little fake legs (I so wanted one of those horsy outfits.) My attention was riveted to those TV shows while they were on the air– but when they were off, those colorful comics reigned supreme. They were ours to keep, to carry around, and to page through again and again. For the following few years, my fifteen cent weekly allowance went to comic books and bubblegum - for me the perfect combination for a joyful afternoon in some quiet corner. Nowadays, as I thumb through an art book, I may see the images with older more educated eyes, but my childlike intensity endures.

Mrs. Sasina's Magic Zinnia Seeds

We cut down the lilacs in front of our house this week. They were planted years ago, little ‘suckers’ brought over in our kids’ wagon along with other flowers given us from a 90 year old neighbor lady, Emily Sasina. She lived in a little house on the alley a few steps away from us and we referred to her as the ‘flower lady’ because her tiny little house was surrounded by plantings and seemed to be in constant bloom from the first growth of Spring to the onset of winter. When my girls and I used to pass her home on our walks up the alley to the grocery store, she would beckon us over to pull a weed or water a shrub or come in for a cookie. Her television blared away next to the front door letting us all know when the evening news had come on. From her chair facing the doorway, she kept tabs on the neighborhood, chuckling at the antics of everyday humanity. Above her chair was a clock that always read 5:17, the hour of her husband’s death. Despite private sorrows, hers was a cheery nature - maybe because she was always surrounded by flowers. She was one of those depression era holdovers who were skilled in making do with little and needing even less. On visits to her simple home, my children would practice their early social skills - sitting politely while we chatted, admiring her old lady collections of ceramic bunnies and greeting cards, fetching items, watering plants and later purchasing things at the store for her on our errands. She walked less and less as she got older. I would see her bent figure on trash day hobbling with her cane, kicking a bag of garbage down the alley to the curb in front of her home. One summer day she made it all the way over to my house for a surprise visit. I was sewing in the kitchen and she sat and cooled off while telling me tales of the neighborhood. She admired the colorful Hawaiian shirts I was making at the time and I was glad to fashion one for her and tickled to see her wear it. Every fall we clip and save the faded blooms of ‘Mrs. Sasina’s magic zinnias’ – sharing them with our friends and family. How better to honor her spirit than with such simple hardy flowers that bring color and joy year after year after year.

Savvy Waitress

My little sister loved Bob's Big Boy hamburgers and when I was a waitress there, I would occasionally bring one home for her after work. Waking her up by waving a warm juicy burger under her nose brought a groggy joyful sigh – even if it was 2am. I remember my first day on the job and my panic at having to take orders when every table in my section filled at the same time. Nothing makes or breaks your ability to maintain your cool under pressure like waiting tables at a family restaurant. It should be required training for all military personnel. Coffee shops serve the whole gamut of humanity, early evening brings old couples and young families, while late night the place becomes the last stop for after hours workers, dates, and partiers looking to sober up. Single men sat at the counter, ordering the same meal night after night, engaging in what little conversations they could with the patient smiling girl paid to be on the other side. One regular used to stutter and work up the courage to finally blurt out “wwwwwhaaat’s good tonite?” and after I proffered a few ideas, settled on his usual ‘medium tip with blue cheese on the salad’. He never ordered anything else, but always asked his question, working up something close to a conversation. Another counter regular was the spitting image of the horror film star, Vincent Price. He was always smiling and chatty and went to the Sav-on drugstore after his dinner and got a nickel ice cream cone - he loved the idea that you could still get an ice cream cone for a nickel. Wouldn’t it be funny if it really was Vincent Price, getting his dinner at Bob’s Big Boy and having a nickel ice cream cone afterwards, how weird would that be? The busboys were all from Mexico and whether they had legitimate paperwork or not was a grey area that no one bothered to discuss. Most, if not all of them were married and lived frugally, sending the bulk of their money back home. Our group (about 6 or so) lived in a ramshackle house just behind the restaurant. Jesus was gaunt and serious, all business. Felipe, in his 60s, was a cheery tiny man. I remember him constantly laughing and talking rapidly in Spanish (which I spoke not a word) his eyes lit up and hands waved describing the plot of his favorite movie, Godzilla. Santiago was young and handsome, an industrious worker who spent his free time and money going to the Forum in LA hoping to be a boxer. He was always sighing in my presence and exclaiming ‘Corazon!’ until finally I gave in and stopped by their home after closing for a visit. They were all very hard working; warm, decent guys and I had absolutely no qualms about being at their house after hours. I did have uneasiness about working at the restaurant and going home at nights to a nice house up on the hill with a swimming pool while many of my co-workers lived in make-ends-meet conditions. That is the dilemma of an entry level job for someone with little experience in anything other than babysitting and doing homework. Later, while in graduate school, I extended my job repertoire by becoming a motel maid. A wonderfully relaxing and mindless job - a vacation compared to waitressing, but then it paid way less. I almost feel sorry for those who have never had a nickel and dime job at some point in their lives, it is an experience which pays with a reality check whose value cannot be measured in dollars. On the rare occasions that I eat out, I leave my tip, visualizing the staff in the back room smoking, drinking sodas, complaining about rude customers and evil supervisors, strategizing how to placate aggressive cooks who sabotaged their orders for amusement, telling jokes, making their plans for the future. After doing my time at Bob’s Big Boy, this battle-scarred savvy waitress is ready to tackle whatever comes to sit at her table.

Salutations

Dad was in the service during WWII like most of his generation. Instead of going overseas, he was sent to Ohio to work on airplanes with a group of engineer-soldiers. They fought for their country with slide rules instead of rifles. I don’t know the exact dates of his military stint, other than that he and Mom married in October of 1943 and my brother was born in September of 1945. Mom and the baby went out and lived with him on the base, for she told me various stories about this time period. Army life for my young Mother, with knife fights and drunken brawls outside her doorstep, was quite a change from growing up in Beverly Hills. During this time, she learned to knot a sewing thread with a few deft twists and a quick roll between the thumb and forefinger. I remember so distinctly her showing this trick to me and telling me of the older no-nonsense female army sergeant who had taught it to her. In this photo, Dad is holding my eight month old brother Mike near their Army housing. I wish I knew what he was saying – the expression is an unusual one for him. Rather than a proud, beaming new father, it’s as if he were delivering a gangster impersonation or sarcastically barking an Army command.

He told me he liked carrying Mike in his arms around base all the time because it got him out of saluting.

Doors

With a brother 4 years older and sisters 5, 7 and 12 years younger, I had some breathing space growing up. Fascinated with the cool activities of my older brother, I too, drew pictures and made models (even though I didn’t particularity like cars and planes). Watching over my little sisters, I helped them build forts and arrange plastic animals in the sandbox, staying long after they lost interest to finish ‘our’ constructions. Escaping the hubbub of preschoolers, I often worked and read and drew and made things alone in my room - a lovingly built sanctuary, with a ready audience just beyond the door. Through that portal, there was always someone available - even if just to argue with, or to play cards with, or tell to shut up, or to turn down the TV, or to show what I was making. I remember working late out back in the rumpus room and coming into the house at 1 or 2 am to get a snack and say hello. It was dark and everyone had gone to bed. So immersed in my own creations - I had no sense of time. Hours flew by, and when I went to visit the ‘other’ world, it was already closed for the night. Dorothy opening her door to enter OZ and those space ships and time machines in Dad’s science fiction books were not such far-fetched ideas – they were just another way of describing that transition between imagination and reality. My Dad saw the world that way in his last years as his dementia increased. Science fiction WAS reality for him. The way his mind worked, he DID go thru doors and get transported to different times and places, for he was seeing with his mind, not his eyes. Sometimes he was on a cruise ship or at the beach house or at the airport or with his mom. His memory so often seemed so much more vivid than his failing eyesight that it overwrote his real-time mental processes. He evaluated his observations with a logic that worked for him and his reality was the reality of a dream state - like those spiritual American Indians in the movies having visions. The dream IS the reality - ignore what you see, go with what you believe, believing is seeing. As we would walk Dad down the hallway at the nursing home, he would suddenly step to the side exclaiming “Look out there’s the opening in the floor! See it! Step in it, WOOSH! You’ll go right through!” And he was right, for he fell many times at the home. Even now I watch my step in unfamiliar hallways, wary of those unseen doorways.

Akerholm Hair

Today is my Mom’s birthday, she would have been 84.

Here she is being held by her 71 year old Grandmother, Anna Catherine Akerholm.
I have always been haunted by this photograph of the two Annes. The stark look of another era, the breeze blowing my Great Grandmother’s wispy thin white hair - “Akerholm Hair” – Mom called it with a sigh as she tried to make it curl and look fuller on our heads. But that Akerholm hair would always cut loose and refuse to be managed, much like our unbending personalities. Mom would tell us about trips as a child to Mississippi to visit her tiny peppy Grandma Annie and how they would all jump on the beds together and have pillow fights. Gramma Annie in her seventies and still spry and FUN, that’s how Mom wanted to be.
Me too.

Rash Medicine

The Iron Baby piece reminded me of another story about my early childhood my Mom used to tell me. It seems I had a terrible skin rash on my neck and to prevent me from scratching at it, my parents put my arms in splints. Whether this revealed a dark side to my parents or was merely an overly harsh medical practice of the early 50’s, I will never know now. Anyway it seemed that despite my constraints, I managed to be able to eat a graham cracker through various sweaty contortions. I dearly wish I could still twist like that now - maybe I should use graham crackers in my yoga practice.