It’s funny how some things like a number, in this case a year, can evoke so many emotions and memories, like opening a box from the attic and finding forgotten treasures.

There’s the bigger scene, the world scene that everybody remembers; the mods, hippies, and rockers, The Beatles and Doors, Vietnam, Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy, then your immediate scene, which, well, OK…, in this case, for me, growing up in LA, also involved hippies, The Doors and Bobby Kennedy. The Doors et al. hung out in the hippie haven of Sierra Madre Canyon, less than a mile from my house, within walking distance, and I was on the freeway only about a mile away from the Ambassador Hotel when we heard on the radio that Bobby was shot.

( I was heading home from a victory rally for Pat Paulsen, the comedian also running for president in ’68, held at the rock club Kaleidoscope on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood just before Hair opened there and they renamed it The Aquarius Theater. The Troggs played “Wild Thing” and their new (and last) hit and Tommy Smothers introduced Pat to the wildly cheering crowd amid a hail of confetti and a brass band…but I digress.)

Then there are the personal events, the personal eras, that spring forth at the cue.

For example I was 15 and a sophomore in high school when I won Best Actor of the Year award, primarily for being a dedicated trouper. Junior Jesters were doing four one acts that spring, in one of which I was cast. Thursday night during dress rehearsal, the day before the show was to open, one of the leads in another play was busted for drinking in the green room and suspended. That meant the original play, written by one of the students, would have to be cancelled. I had seen one of the rehearsals and approached Tom Payne, the teacher directing it, and offered to crash learn the part in time to open the next night. The character was onstage most of the time and had 35 lines, but after an emergency rehearsal and listening to a tape recording of the lines in my sleep, I somehow pulled it off.
That acknowledgement instantly installed me in the school hierarchy and gave me a raison d’être as theater consumed me.

1968 brought Billie and Judy. Mom had bought a sprawling 5 bedroom ranch style house on the hill in Arcadia to share with her also recently divorced friend Ardith, who then suddenly bailed and took her two kids back to Michigan when her father died. Mom was left with a big house payment and only a secretary’s income so she took in two foster girls to make better use of the space and to supplement the household income. (Dad never did pay any child support)

Billie was a 15 year old partial-quad in a power wheelchair who had spent much of her life as a resident at Rancho Los Amigos Hospital, a rehab facility in Downey. She had undergone countless surgeries for her spinal cord injury and now had a spinal fusion with a rod up her back and, not surprisingly, an attitude to match. On Easter Sunday, during her third and final home visitation when we were to decide if she would “work out”, we got the news that her hopitalized mother had succumbed to her cancer. The die was cast. I had a new sister.
Then a month or so later came Judy, a 16 year old problem teen from a messed up family who kept running away from foster homes. She had straight hair, harshly bleached and parted in the middle exposing dark roots, which hung limply along her set jaw. Abused and abandoned, she had developed a hard defensive exterior which she armored with wannabe hippie attire, chewing gum, and attitude. Mom hoped we could give her another chance by offering her a stable environment.
She was relentlessly and determinedly optimistic that way.
“Sister” number two.

Summer came along and Mom decided that we should go on a road trip. Neither of the girls had ever been out of the state and Mom wanted to bring us all to Michigan to see the family. Her enthusiasm built to include an ambitious grand tour, traveling along the south via I-10, then up the east coast through Washington DC and New York, to Niagara Falls, across into Canada through Ontario to Detroit, and then back through Missouri to see Grandma Bateman before heading home in time for school in September. Did I mention that she was relentlessly determinedly optimistic?

Pokey Penny

Pokey Penny. That was what Mom named our old Volkswagen van we got when Billie came along. Well, actually, Polk-a-long Penelope is what I painted in big psychedelic letters on the side. Mom had found in a mail order catalog (Remember those? Before the Internet) a package of assorted stick-on polka dots in a variety of colors and sizes ranging from a couple of inches in diameter up to 18″ (the overly popular flower decals Rikki Tikki Stickies and their competitor Crazy Daisies were just too hip) and we stuck them all over the beat-up beige 1958 VW bus (the first year they had imported them to the US, and she had been well driven). I painted Pokey Penny on the back as a sort of apology for our sluggishness. You see, Penny had no first gear, requiring extensive clutch finesse, and a top speed of 40 MPH, even on the freeway, although, I confess that when Mom wasn’t around, I’d get her up to 45.

We needed a van to get Billie and her 350 pound wheelchair around and Uncle JC rigged a ramp for it with a pair of 7′ long aluminum I-beams with a bolt at one end that slotted into holes he drilled into the frame. They would clamp onto a rack he made on the roof over the doors. We took out the middle bench seat leaving a bench back seat and a bench front seat, rigged tie-downs behind the driver and Billie backed in, facing the doors which opened out, French-door style.
The interior was bare metal so we installed fiberglass insulation and skinned it with 1/4 inch particle board (way too heavy for the task) which deadened the sound of the struggling rear engine quite nicely. We painted everything beige and she finished off the look by covering the wrap around windows with small kitcheny curtains she made from some colorful polka-dotted sheets she found somewhere. The little air cooled engine in the back didn’t get enough flow given the load so we attached a pair of fiberglass air scoops on the sides at the back which rammed air into the engine compartment and made her look more racy. Well, sort of. On especially hot days we would tie the door to the engine compartment open and hang a wet towel in there swamp cooler style, but only for short runs around town, never the freeway. The windshield wipers didn’t work so we hitched them together and ran strings in through the wind wings where the passenger operated them manually, pulling on the strings reciprocally. I eventually installed a spring so they would self return and could be operated one handed by the driver in a pinch. Luckily we lived in Southern California so the need didn’t arise much, until The Trip that is.
Did I mention that it was 1968?

The Trip

Epic adventures often begin with no suggestion of the impending calamities to follow. This one was the other kind. Well, for anyone who wasn’t relentlessly determinedly optimistic, anyway.
We had to wait until summer school was out so I could take driver’s training and get my license to share in the driving. By the time that school let out, I took my driving test, and the license came in the mail, it was mid-August already. The five of us packed into Penny and we set off for a great American adventure.
Picture it…………
Mom, 36, the year after her first stress related heart attack, heading out alone with her four teenage kids, two of whom were handicapped and two of whom she barely knew, on a 3000 plus mile trek in a rickety old hippie van loaded to the rafters, including a full roof rack, across the deserts of the southwest in August, armed only with a couple of hundred dollars, a cooler full of food, and a Union 76 credit card.
What could go wrong?

The plan was to sleep in the van most of the time to save money, only checking into a motel every few days to attend to Billie’s special needs. It had to be one that accepted our gas credit card but luckily we had a printed guide that showed all of the affiliates and we planned our itinerary accordingly. That’s right; five of us including the wheelchair and cooler all inside the stuffy little van. Billie’s chair would recline with the foot pedals up and Dhan could sleep on the floor alongside her. Judy would sleep on the back bench seat and Mom would sleep on the front bench seat. Then I made a hammock, more of a stretcher, really, using the I-beam ramps spanning the backs of the front and back seats with a tarp wrapped around them. (a boy scout emergency stretcher trick I had learned) We were stacked in like cordwood.
We tried to set out early with the intention of getting across the California desert before it got too hot but by the time we got loaded and on the road, and with a top speed of 40, we managed to hit the most desolate stretch before the California/Arizona border around the hottest part of midday, when suddenly the engine lost power and quit. We’d burned out a valve or two.

The nearest payphone was miles away in Needles so we just had to wait for a Highway Patrolman to come along and radio for a tow truck. (No cell phones yet and before the CB craze) We passed the time making and eating sandwiches, listening to the AM radio, and sweating. I remember hearing The Beatles’ “Hey Jude” for the first time, standing in the hot wind in the shade of the van in the middle of nowhere.

It was an exciting moment for me, partly because I had recognized who it was, never having heard it before. I must be getting hip! That crummy little radio draining our puny 6 volt battery was our connection to the civilized world, a lifeline to hope here in the searing wasteland.
“Hey Jude, don’t make it bad. Take a sad song and make it better.”
“Buck-up lads” encouragement from the Fab Four all the way from England via the airwaves! Modern hope. (Judy, of course, was delighted to be personally addressed)

After our hot exile, Needles was an exquisite oasis, a vital outpost offering the primary necesities of modern life, such as air conditioning, ice, pop, auto repair, phones, toilets…..the list goes on. So much we take for granted!

Once we were on the road again our original enthusiasm reasserted itself and we resumed the mad adventure. Things were pretty uneventful for awhile and we did the typical tourist things, especially enjoying the newly installed rest stops on the newly installed Interstate highway system, visiting Tombstone and the Alamo and such but never stopping for long. It took more than three days to get across Texas.

One day as we drove across a featureless plain, a severe thunderstorm suddenly dumped so much water that the wipers proved to be useless, no matter how fast you pulled the strings, not to mention the bucketsful pouring through the open wind wings. Huge trucks roared past, inundating our struggling little top-heavy, 4 cylinder wagon with great tsunamis of blinding water. It was only our sheer weight that prevented us from being blown off the road and we were forced to hide under a freeway overpass, fearing floods or tornadoes. We were not alone under there as others had sought the same refuge and we felt an odd human bond as castaways huddled together for safety. I broke out the sterno stove and made our little troupe hot cocoa to cheer and distract us from the deafening thunder and sick yellow light heralding tornadoes.

Then, as is the case with such furies, the tempest ceased as abruptly as it had begun and a brilliant sun suspended a rainbow amid the towering white columns advancing to the east. Penny nosed her way out from her shelter and back onto the highway, puttering across a sparkling prairie.

Our first motel was in Arlington Texas, between Dallas and Ft.Worth. I spent most of the time in the pool and the air conditioned room, taking full advantage of the rare opportunity and relishing food that didn’t come from the, by now, smelly cooler. The next day we set out east on I-10, restored and confident, never dreaming………

Night of the Swamp

From Dallas, we cut south to Houston and then East to follow the gulf coast. The further east we went, the wetter and more humid it became, preventing the engine from cooling so we started doing the driving in the cooler hours of the night and selected lesser routes to accommodate our limited top speed and to encounter less traffic. The prairie transitioned to swampland and dense forests and the stench of rotting vegetation and mold increasingly aggravated my asthma and offended the nose.

Sometime in the middle of the night, while Mom napped, Judy pulled off the highway somewhere looking for a gas station that was open. I guess she had seen a billboard featuring a Skelly station someplace a few miles off the already-back-roads we were on. We were surrounded by swampland somewhere between Texas and Louisiana and the bugs were so thick, you had to pull the wipers just to see, occasionally stopping to throw water on the greasy mess

She must have missed the closed station in the dark, the windows being so streaky and the weary headlights barely penetrating the sodden night and so she sleepily just drove on and on. At some point Mom woke up and drowsily asked where we were. Judy’s “I don’t know but we’re almost out of gas.” reply woke her sharply and she sat up and dug out the map and the flashlight.

“Where did we leave the highway?” she asked, rustling the map open, “How long was I asleep?” she asked, her voice worried. “Pull over and show me.”

The road was lined with deep drainage ditches which served as barriers to the swampy forest beyond, the dark trees dripping with Spanish moss, and the channels looked even deeper in the gloom so Judy drove for awhile, headlights from the rear view mirrors blinding her, until she found an open space that looked safe to pull out and swung onto it quickly to allow the customary string of annoyed motorists to grumble by,… only to discover that it was not concrete, but, rather, someone’s lovely, manicured grass lawn. We slid to a halt and quickly looked at the map while cars sped by, headlights illuminating the colorful van mired in up to the hubcaps and the unfortunate muddy double track left by Penny’s tires plowing deeply through the soggy soil.
Since we didn’t know exactly where we were, our safest bet was to backtrack to the highway and hope to spot the gas station on the way. Luckily the house lights remained dark as we made our getaway, fishtailing our way in a second-gear clutch roar back to the road, heading back the way we had come, and fully expecting some Yosemite Sam character in half-buckled overalls to burst from the house with the hounds baying and chase us barefoot across his vandalized lawn, taking pot shots at us with his shotgun, and hollering “Damned Yankee hippies!”. (What images would you expect from a drama kid?)
Some miles back we found the closed station, a mildewed white wooden relic with an inadequate little awning over the two ancient pumps. The dark splotches on the walls turned out to be rusty old ad signs like Coca Cola and Pennzoil. With still no clear idea of where we were and, more importantly, where the next nearest gas station was, the wisest thing to do was to stay here in the lot until they opened in the morning and get gas and directions. We pulled her toward the back of the lot and got set up for the night. The long, long night.

I didn’t think that the doors were open that long, but we had to get Billie situated, the cooler out, and the ramps in. Then I had to fashion the “hammock” before anyone could get in, and we only had the flashlight and, of course, the little dome light. Anyway, once set up, everyone piled in and we shut off the lights, slid open the front door windows partway for ventilation, and settled down to try to sleep.

Let me set the scene:
Five of us, packed in like sweaty sardines in a psychedelic tin.
90 degrees, outside, and 90 percent humidity.
Just two small windows in the front, only partly open for fear of intruders.
Pitch black outside
No phone, we’re lost, nobody knows where we are.

As we quieted down inside, the din of crickets and frogs outside was the first thing you noticed. Then, while your eyes tried to focus in the blackness, your ears focused to hear a tiny, high pitched sound, almost like your ears were ringing, coming from inside the bus, followed by a quick slapping sound.
Oh no! Mosquitoes. You’d lie there in the absolute darkness and listen to them stalking you, buzzing closer and closer until the sudden, awful silence, followed immediately by another slap. This went on for awhile until finally some fool suggested that we turn on a light to see where they were.

The flashlight beam hit the ceiling, at first blinding our darkness dilated eyes until they adjusted to reveal a chaotic cloud of mosquitoes swarming inside the place. Aieeee! After a strong bout of the willies, we closed the windows and went on a killing spree. We had no bug spray ( luckily or we’d have probably all asphyxiated in the sealed can) so we smashed the little bastards, fat with our blood, leaving new dots all over the inside walls. I swear we got them all, but somehow they kept getting in. There was a sound that, at first we took to be water dripping from the trees onto the van and we wondered if it had started to rain until we realized that it was hitting the sides, too. It was the swarm of insects, trying to get in to us, pounding like the rain on the metal box all night long. It was a B movie nightmare!

The heat was oppressive. After trying different things, I found that a sheet dipped in meltwater from the cooler and pulled up over my head both cooled me a little and deterred the mosquitoes somewhat. We covered Billie the same way as she could neither feel nor swat the mosquitoes in her lower extremities. The night was interminable and I doubt that any of us slept.

The next morning when they opened, we used the bathroom, gassed up, and hit the road in a hurry, anxious to get out of the nightmare swamp. The daylight revealed Billie covered in mosquito bites. With no feeling from the chest down, she couldn’t feel them when they bit and they lingered and feasted. By the time we got to New Orleans, she had a raging fever and we had to find a clinic right away. I don’t know how they treated her but we were on the road again by evening, her fever subsided. Since they obviously wouldn’t accept Billie’s MediCal, Mom had inquired about selling a pint of her rare B negative blood to cover the medical costs, but her blood pressure was too low (surprisingly, given the stress) and they refused her, agreeing to send the bill to our home address to deal with when we got back. We drove down Bourbon Street after dark, just to see it, before driving out of the city to find a motel.

We got an early start the next morning and pressed on eastward. By the time we got to Biloxi, Mississippi, we were pretty much over the enthusiasm of a cross-country adventure and more into a “let’s get this over with” mode. The only lodging in town that would take the Conoco affiliated card was an upscale resort hotel right on the beach. (There were no 76 stations now as we had passed into the south where the word “Union” surprisingly still caused some consternation, so we had to find affiliates such as Conoco and Skelly.) It was a sweet seaside village then with lots of Antebellum mansions overlooking the Gulf. We began with a meal in their restaurant while we discussed our situation. Solid, hot meals had been increasingly infrequent and we ate heartily, forestalling the inevitable “talk” until after dessert. Yes, we even had dessert. Something big was up.
The events of the trip had activated Mom’s survival genes, strong among her people, which overpowered her Scrubby Dutch, can-do, roll up your sleeves and tackle anything with, you guessed it, relentless determined optimism. We were about out of cash, the trip was taking longer than anticipated, and we still had a long way to go so we’d have to streamline our itinerary and hurry to the safe haven of Michigan. Up until now, the repair and hospital bills had either been charged to the card or invoiced by mail, but we’d have to sell the piano to pay the bills. What else could we do but agree and try to make the best of things. We’d had enough “fun” anyway. Mom splurged on a nice room for us, and then went to a pay phone and called Aunt Mary Ellen, collect, to have her sell the baby grand and wire us the money in Michigan. (I was the only one who played piano anyway, and theater had my attention now) The resolution fostered insouciance and, after showers all around and a good night’s rest, we once again set out, feeling refreshed and reoriented and re-determined.

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There was an intriguing side note to the Biloxi experience. Exactly a year later, on August 18, 1969, Hurricane Camille took out a long stretch of US Hwy 90, depositing a tanker across the road we’d traveled and washing away the hotel we’d stayed in, along with Biloxi and most of the coastline there. I happened to follow the same route yet another year later in August, 1970, and got to see the devastation first hand, by then mostly cleared of debris, but there were still vacant lots and battered trees everywhere. Completely unrecognizeable with no remaining landmarks, I had to really hunt to find the remains of the hotel, now just a foundation in the sand with a fabulous view of the gulf.

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Everywhere we went, we got interesting responses from the locals. Given the psychedelic exterior and California plates, were often mistaken to be a traveling hippie band. Eventually we gave up denying it and let them indulge their fantasies. ” Yup. Ah amember seein’ that hippie band, the Pokeylong Penaloaps,… er somethin’, pass through heah way back in the late Sixties, warn’t it”. (The Partridge Family didn’t come along until 1970. Since we lived in LA, I always wondered if we inspired it? The story of Penny and this trip had been published in the Arcadia Tribune the next year, the week before I totaled her. Another story.) Occasionally we would get a peace sign flashed at us as people roared past us, although usually it was just one of the fingers. Sometimes we’d be putting along dark little roads at night and there would be long stretches through the swamps and bayous where there was nowhere to pull over and let the accumulating traffic pass. When we did find a place, people would sometimes roar by honking and shouting out the window. Judy used to flip them off right back, but it took until New York for Mom to pick up the habit. I think our record was a string of 23 cars that were stuck following us for miles until we could find a place to pull over.
We arrived in the Washington DC area late at night and decided to stay at a motel in nearby Virginia. My memories are vague, confusing them with the next trip two years later, (yet another story) but have a strange fragment of lifting Billie into a standing position at the top of the Washington Monument so she could look out, though, except for a vague memory of seeing the steps of the library of congress, and driving past the Smithsonian, I have only vague impressions of memories of the place today.

NEW YORK SHITTY…uh, CITY

Mom wisely decided that she should be the one to do the driving when we entered Manhattan. We had absolutely no intention of staying but felt that we had to at least see it. Boy, did we get to see it!
Penny lumbered through the Holland Tunnel probably around noon and we emerged, immediately lost in Manhattan. The heavy, chaotic traffic and abundance of one-way streets had Mom frazzled in no time. We hadn’t been there long when we found ourselves in the meat packing district around 13th on the west side stuck in a traffic jam while one of New York’s finest tried to flag out a jackknifed truck blocking the entire road.

You know how there are moments in life where one seemingly trivial decision can alter the course of history irretrievably? Turn right or left? Heads or tails? Condom, no condom. This was one of those moments.

We sat there for five, then ten minutes, waiting to move, stifling in the muggy Manhattan summer when Mom decided to turn off the overheating engine. Click.

The tumblers of fate locked into place with that click and even before the gasping little bus coughed to a stop, the truck suddenly pulled clear and Mom tried to re-start her. Click.

Nothing. Not even a “RrrrrRrrrrRrrrrr”. Dead.

At that instant every horn behind us for blocks began blaring. She turned it off and tried again and again in vain, when the cop stalked up to the driver’s window. We were momentarily relieved, expecting him to offer some assistance, but then just got the ass.

“Hey, lady! Move this fuckin’ piece of shit!” He hollered in her ear as she futilely clicked the starter again and again.

She was so startled at his harshness that she whirled on him.

“Damn it! Can’t you see I’m trying?! I turned it off and now it won’t start!”

“That was stupid! Why would you turn it off?” he shouted over the horns still complaining.

“You took so long with that truck it was overheating!” she shouted right back. “Are you going to help us or what?” she demanded, outraged at his brutish behavior and up for the challenge.

In reply he walked to the back of the van, motioned for the trucker behind us to help, and the two of them shoved us roughly off to the side, and then he just walked away as the traffic pushed past us, leaving us stranded with no idea where we were or what to do next.

We found a phone book somewhere and discovered where the one VW dealership was in Manhattan, somewhere in the middle twenties I think. Mom thought it wise for us to stay together (and she got no arguments on that point. This was a disturbing neighborhood even in the daylight.) so our courageous little band of five set out across Manhattan armed only with a AAA roadmap of New York state that had an inset for the city.

Billie’s power wheelchair hadn’t been charged since Virginia and steadily ran out of power as we made our way uptown on Seventh Avenue. This was in the days before curb cuts and we had to tip her chair way back, putting the front wheels on the curb, and then lifting/driving the back end up. Going down the curb, you had to go in reverse, back wheels down first, then front, then turn around and cross the street, and start again. While the batteries held, getting up the curbs was manageable, but in no time we had to disengage the motors and push the 350 pound chair (plus Billie’s weight) up the avenue, struggling up and down the curbs which seemed about a couple of feet tall by now.

It probably took the better part of an hour to trek to the dealership and when we finally got some service, a mechanic drove Mom and me in his tow truck back to the van. (we were relieved to see it was still there, intact)

He decided it was the starter switch and hot-wired it to get to get it going, avoiding a tow, and we followed him back to Dhan, Judy, and Billie, waiting at the shop. They didn’t have to wait long as it was a lot quicker when you weren’t pushing a dead wheelchair on foot. Being an old van, they didn’t have the part which would have to be brought from their supplier in New Jersey before they could fix it. That left us with nothing to do for a few hours so we decided to go for a little sightseeing while we waited. Lest it be snatched, we carefully hid Mom’s purse, with the vital credit card and the maybe ten or twenty bucks left in it, probably in the cooler with the last of our food, and brought the suitcases from the roof rack inside, but, leaving the key, were unable to lock it. The van was indoors in their shop so we hoped things would be safe and set out, heading up 5th Avenue, taking turns pushing Billie. At first Dhan had some macho thing to prove and did most of the pushing, though it took both of us on the curbs, but by the time we made it to 32nd street, he was ready to share. It was exciting to finally see the Empire State Building, especially to look up at it and get a sense of how tall it actually is, having only seen aerial shots of it from the side, like in King Kong. We had no money to go up to the top so we just stared at it for awhile and then headed back.

Again, our progress was slow and we arrived back at the dealership shortly after five to find it locked tight, lights off, and no information on the door other than the store hours indicating that it was closed until eight AM the next morning! No emergency number! Nothing! We pounded on the door but no one came.

Can you imagine the kind of superhuman strength it took for Mom to engage the relentlessly determined optimism at this point? But she did it!

The Night

What else could we do but tough it out? We decided to just keep moving and see the city as long as we were here. We were literally penniless. Not even a dime to call home. To whom anyway? What could Dad do from Long Beach? We walked back to Seventh Avenue, partly because the busy, well lit street seemed safer, and headed uptown toward Central Park. It was getting dark by the time we hit Times Square and the lights were already bright. Onward we pushed, by now like some kind of mindless migration, pushing and lifting the wheelchair ever northward until the road ended at the park. Still we pushed on, unthinking, entering the park around ten at night, well after dark. Being in a quieter green space brought us back to an easier pace and I was particularly glad that there were fewer curbs. We drank thirstily from the first drinking fountain we encountered, having neither eaten or drunk anything since breakfast and had sweated buckets in the muggy heat, laboring north. As we approached one of the pedestrian tunnels, we encountered a wave of hippies flowing out of the park from a love-in. (1968, remember?) It suddenly occurred to us that perhaps further passage might prove to be hazardous and that maybe Johnny Carson’s jokes about muggings in Central Park were founded in truth, so we withdrew to the edge of the park and collapsed on a park bench within sight of 59th street and the Essex House.

The next thing I knew Mom was rousing me from a sound sleep with a tense, panicked whisper.

“Quick! Get up! Don’t ask! Just walk! Hurry!”

Wha?

As we hustled out, I glanced back to see a few guys standing a short way off, facing each other conspiring, as Dhan and I together hurriedly pushed Billie up the walk, out of the gates and across the street. Only then did Mom and Judy explain that a small gang of maybe five guys had walked past us sprawled on the bench, then stopped to confer with each other off at a distance, shooting blatant surreptitious glances, obviously discussing us, and then split up to surround us.
Yikes!
They weren’t jokes!!
The adrenalin propelled us back to Times Square in a fraction of the time it had taken before. Well lit and still alive with pedestrians, we felt safer in the confusion. I think it was a Nathan’s hot dog restaurant whose doorstep we camped out on at Seventh and 42nd street. They were closed, by then being after midnight, but there were workers inside still cleaning for awhile and that somehow made us feel safer.

Maybe an hour or so into our vigil, I heard someone shouting around the corner and saw people gathering so I walked around to see what was going on, expecting some kind of performance or something. Up on the third floor, some guy was shouting, raving, out of a window at the growing crowd below. I couldn’t tell what he was saying and looked around for a clue in the faces of the blank faced gawkers when the tubby, sweaty little jerk with a greasy comb-over standing next to me took out the smelly, soggy end of the vile cigar poking from his ugly mouth and shouted, in a coarse, NY dialect,

“Shut the fuck up and just jump, already!”

I was appalled! On so many levels!

I dashed back to our little group huddled together on the doorstep of the Deli and relayed the story. And so we huddled some more.

With the exception of the cop and the service guy, we hadn’t been spoken to or even had eye contact with anyone the entire time we’d been there. We were, to their eyes I suppose, either tourists or trouble, (rightly so I guess) and they hurried by, intent with their own more important lives. Not a smile nor friendly glance received us to the city and we were alone and broke and thirsty and hungry in a city we didn’t know or like, where everybody had been cold and mean to us. And to top it off, now I had to go to the bathroom.

Shortly after two, a homeless bum, swaying from a three day bender, shuffled up to the corner and stood there for a long time, hovering around the lamp post and trash can, just staring at us. Not in a predatory way at all, but more of one confused by what he thinks he’s seeing, like flying pink elephants. Judy probably noticed him first, but Mom said to just ignore him. By now we had toughened. We’re nothing if not survivors and the “When in Rome” principle had brought us to a harder edge, if only to not stick out so much. Tough bravado, like chihuahuas up against boxers.

After awhile he staggered up to us, swaying slightly as he sized us up for a moment, and asked,

“What are you striking for?”

What? Not what we expected, and that struck us as so funny, because Johnny Carson, our New York authority, had been making jokes about the New York strikes, and this guy had just confirmed it. He seemed harmless enough and it seemed like he really meant what he asked, but still, we didn’t want to encourage him to stay, like feeding a stray cat, nor to betray our vulnerability, so Mom put on her best NYC attitude and said,

“None of your business! Go away!”

and then she turned her back on him and continued to pretend to have a conversation with us. He blinked, and then turned and slowly walked away down Seventh Avenue.

Whew, we thought, and continued to huddle quietly among ourselves.

A little while later, after we’d forgotten about him, he came back, almost timidly, and said,
” No, really. I mean it. What are you doing here?” and stood waiting for a reply.

His sincerity was disarming and he seemed just like a regular guy. His clothes were worn but clean enough and, except for the occasional whiff of alcohol on his breath, he didn’t have that bum stank.

This was the first person to speak to us. And with words of concern.

So we gushed, our story bursting out from our dammed up fear and frustration! As we all chimed in our parts of the story, he just stood there in stunned amazement. By the time we got to the part about Billie’s fever in the swamp, his eyes welled up with tears, and as we punctuated our tale of being exiled, hungry and destitute on the streets of a city that had abused us so much, with our disillusionment and contempt, we had won him over as our guardian angel and ambassador for NYC. Ironic, eh?

We talked for awhile, swapping histories, and the mood lightened a lot. He obviously hadn’t always been a bum, but had hit hard times, the details of which escape me now, and presently was coming off a three day bender about something or other. He had a daughter living in California and that instantly made us somehow connected. After chatting awhile, the exchange slowed and we went back to feeling slightly awkward, still waiting as we were, when he turned to us and said,

“Hey, kids. Are you hungry?”

“Yeah!! We haven’t eaten since breakfast this,… er, yesterday morning.” I lamented.

He got a far away look in his eyes, like he was reading a directory, and said,

“I’ll be back in a little while.” and disappeared into Times Square, still busy at three AM, but not so chaotic now.

We were all a little relieved that he’d left, but at the same time it felt a little lonely, too, like someone had just turned out the porch light. Maybe twenty minutes later, though, he came strolling proudly back, more sober now, and with a big grin on his face. He held out a white paper bag stuffed full of hot dogs! Ten of them! Two apiece! Wow!!

“Here.” he said proudly.

We were floored! “Where did you get these?” we intoned in unison as we tore through the bag, distributing the treasures around.

“A friend of mine owed me a favor.” was all he would say on the matter. We didn’t care, not even Mom, and we gobbled them down. The most delicious hot dogs ever! Not only because we were starved, but because he had done such an astounding thing for us, total strangers, completely shattering our conceptions about “those” people. The best, and shortest, meal ever enjoyed, dining al fresco with a new friend in Times Square on a hot summer night.

No longer “that bum”, he was just somebody else trying to get through the night and we were glad for his company,… and his connections.
But now, having eaten, I really needed that bathroom now, so I asked him what he could suggest. There was a bar around the corner was the best he had to offer, so I went to see if I could find it. Barely sixteen, I was afraid they’d throw me out, so I hurried in and followed the signs down the stairs, only to find that they were pay toilets. A nickel! What an outrage, charging your drinking customers to use the toilet! I didn’t have a nickel and I returned dejected and dancing.

“Can’t you just go in the alley?” he asked, somewhat impatiently.

Though, ordinarily, I might have risked it, not only did entering a dark alley alone seem foolhardy, by now, I needed more than a urinal.

He hesitated a moment before digging in his pocket for a nickel. Surprised and grateful, I thanked him profusely and hurried to my task.

While we waited for the long night to pass, he advised us about different resources, such as Traveler’s Aid, in case we needed to find an alternate way home. Maybe Mom just reminded him of his own daughter, but he treated us like family. I got the impression that he got the same outsider shunning that we had gotten, only every day, and that he was lonely and genuinely grateful to have people to care for and talk with.

” So, have you seen the city much?” he asked.

“No, we just walked up to the park and came back before we met you.”

“The park? After dark? Not a good idea.” he warned.

“Yeah, we know.” we said in unison and took turns relating the tale.

“You want to see some stuff while you’re waiting for the place to open in the morning?”

By now, having fed us strays, we were willing to follow him on a walking tour of midtown Manhattan by night. He’d proven his character to us and we trusted him, even more than the NYPD at that point.

So off we went on a walking tour of Manhattan after 4AM, led by our friendly Guardian Bum. Still pushing the wheelchair but buoyed by the hot dogs, we walked to a few sites, such as Central Library and the Empire State Building (again).

The sky was lightening as we settled for a rest in a small, triangular park surrounded by streets. There were several benches lining the walk and a big bronze statue of a man seated, a newspaper in his hand. Fifteen or twenty other homeless men were littered about on the benches and curbs, some of them also draped in newspaper, but luckily we were able to find a bench and collapsed, weary, but in that numb zone that offers transcendence.

There was a clock tower with a big bell on it which read 6:15 and by now it was fully light out, though the sun wouldn’t reach this artificial canyon until probably noon. I wandered over to look at the statue to pass the time. Growing up in LA I was unaccustomed to public statuary and stood for awhile studying it. The plaque said it was of Horace Greely, longtime editor of the New York Tribune which had been located across the street. I hadn’t heard of him before but the quote on the plaque seemed to be directed to me.

“Go West, young man, Go West …”

Sound advice that I planned to take as soon as possible.

Everyone sitting around kept looking up at the clock tower and more and more people shuffled in as the top of the hour approached. One fellow walked over to the granite drinking fountain, removed his shirt, and cheerily began to bathe. Laudable but disturbing.

Then, as if on cue, everyone wordlessly rose and headed toward the corner. Our guide hustled us along to join up in this strange migration and we found ourselves standing in a long line just as the bells all over the city rang seven. We felt out of place in that ragged assemblage until we noticed some “ordinary” people in line, too, even some in suits carrying briefcases. Bizarre! As we approached the head of the line, we could see a friar in brown robes tied with a rope belt, handing out day-old sandwiches from the automat. We received ours with a cheery “Good morning!” and went on our way humbled and grateful. As we boys tore into our sandwiches, our guide cried, “No, no. Wait! You save these for lunch. Now we go over to the Salvation Army by eight for breakfast. Really good!”, he enthused, ”You get your choice of meat and juice!” We were all caught up with the idea of a hot meal and considered going until Mom decided that maybe we should go back to the dealership and see if they were open yet. With that, he led us directly back to the dealership, luckily because by now we were quite lost.

As soon as they opened, Mom checked in while we waited. When she returned, he asked, “Is everything alright?” Once assured that we were covered, he went around and made brief goodbyes, a little reluctant to go. We thanked him profusely and, as he turned to go, he hesitated, turned back and said, “Oh, by the way, my name is Bob.” And with a warm smile, he shook Mom’s hand one last time and walked out onto the street walking east, never looking back. We never saw or heard of him again.

I wonder how he tells the story?

Mom laid it on thick with the service manager, who reminded me a little of the creep with the cigar in Times Square, threatening to send a letter to the Volkswagen of America corporate offices for casting a mother of handicapped children out into the streets of New York as they did. Needless to say, they were mortified when they heard the story, probably fearing a lawsuit more than concern for our ordeal. He sent someone out to get us a box of donuts and dug out his keys and opened the coke machine for us, saying, “There you go, kids, help yourselves. Take anything you want.” Then they took up a collection from the guys in the shop amounting to about fifty dollars, gave us a chit for a free tank of gas at a station downtown, and offered to send the invoice to the house, that we could pay whenever we could. We thanked them, still dazed from the whole experience, and after gassing up, hurried out of town and upstate in a dash for Michigan.

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New York Postscript:

As a result of my unpleasant introduction to NYC, I managed to avoid going back again until more than twenty years later when I secured a job with Mattel Toys setting up the gallery for the annual Toy Fair in February. The job was merciless, entailing daily long hours for several weeks with no days off. I was exhausted and blue, feeling a little sorry for myself for my unfortunate exile to this cold (in so many ways) place. I stayed at the Southgate Tower on Seventh Avenue, where I had a nice suite on the corner of the twentieth floor, kitty-corner from Penn Station. It boasted a separate bedroom with a balcony, two bathrooms, three closets, and a little kitchen overlooking 31st St. One dark morning, I was feeling glum and missing my own bed and the sunshine of LA. I sat at the little kitchen table, sipping my coffee, and gazed down at the street below, lost in thought, when my eyes finally focused on what I was seeing. In the middle of the block, across the street from my room, was the St. Francis Bookshop and standing at the gates was a monk in robes and a rope belt handing out sandwiches to a long line of homeless people stretching down the block! It was the very same line we’d stood in more than twenty years before! Suddenly realizing what I was looking at, I had the epiphany of perspective shift and burst into tears, chastened at my spoiled selfishness as I looked down from my tower at those who had much better reasons to be sad this morning.

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The remainder of the trip was rather uneventful, with the exception of almost losing Billie over Niagara Falls when her heavy chair started sliding in the misty slickness toward the edge. It took three of us to drag her back up the slope to safety. We easily crossed through Canada, re-entering the US through the Windsor Tunnel into Detroit. After a brief, restorative visit with family and collecting the wired cash, we made a direct push for home, driving day and night, and with no more mechanical problems or misadventures and arrived back to sunny So Cal in time to start my junior year in high school, tempered by the experience, a little more confident, and a lot wiser.