September 29, 2005 – Setting Off a High Tech Explosion

September 29, 2005 – Setting Off a High Tech Explosion

When I first entered the world of public relations back in the autumn of 1977, I was admitted because I understood the technology that was beginning to emerge in the Santa Clara Valley of Northern California. I had some skill in journalism having served for nine months as the west coast editor for a now-defunct computer publication, but that was less of a consideration. I joined the Regis McKenna Advertising & Public Relations firm then on the northwest corner of Lytton Avenue and Waverley Street. My largest client was Intel Corp. I knew the company’s products from my time with Diablo Systems, a Xerox Corp. company, where I worked before joining the magazine. Diablo had designed and built a computer system for small business using the Intel 8080 microprocessor as its central processor unit. The system was housed in an enclosure that resembled a desk with the computer hardware where you would normally find the file drawers and a Diablo daisywheel printer, computer monitor, and keyboard on the desktop.

If you are under 40-years old, it’s hard to picture the 1970s industrial design of the system, but it’s most glaring feature was up to four black metal 8-in. floppy disk drives—the mass storage for the system, mounted such that the 8-in. floppy media was inserted vertically. The daisywheel printing element is a plastic wheel containing all the letters and numbers spinning at high speed and a hammer slamming the spoke tip with letter or number against a carbon ribbon that imprinted on the paper, an improvement over the golf ball printing element that was once pervasive in all IBM typewriters. I’ve belabored the description of this system for two reasons. The first is that the Regis McKenna Agency had purchased one of these systems. The second is that I wrote all the documentation for the system. I mention the latter because the system integration company that sold the agency the system, packaged with accounting software for an advertising agency, complained about the documentation, a criticism that I took personally.

At the time I joined the agency, one of my PR campaigns was to introduce the Intel 8086. The 8086 was the first 16-bit computer from Intel—the 8080 was an 8-bit CPU—and was the progenitor of the CPUs in all Intel-based computers of today. Every software routine running on an Intel-based PC today, is executing the instruction set, first introduced on the 8086. At the time 8086 debuted, the IBM PC didn’t exist. So called microcomputers—to distinguish them from minicomputers and mainframes—back then, were largely built on the Intel 8080 processor and executed the CP/M operating system from Digital Research—“the” operating system for personal computers of the day. Alternatives that ran proprietary operating systems, such as the Commodore PET and Apple II—called “home computers” incorporated the 6502, a microprocessor designed by Chuck Peddle and a team of engineers for a company called MOS Technology. Peddle and his followers had designed the 6800 for Motorola but left en masse afterwards.

Intel had two major competitors back then they cared about: Motorola with its 6800, and Zilog, the company that had built an 8080-compatible processor, the Z80, that was faster than the 8080. Intel was determined to grab the performance mantle away from both these competitors. The 6502 wasn’t on their radar screen. Intel feared Motorola because it was then a formidable competitor among customers the two companies coveted. In one of the agency meetings the Intel product marketing team rolled out its treadmill strategy: produce a product roadmap in which each successive generation of processor increased performance sufficiently that the competitors had to struggle to keep up. The 8086 was to be the first in the line. My job was to manage a product roll-out that would have the Intel product featured in as many publications as possible, all echoing the message of performance leadership.

One of the great problems of any public relations agency is overemphasis on “relations.” Face-to-face meetings and phone conversations with clients and media are billable hours. However, building awareness and making a case for the position Intel wanted to create requires reasoned argument and this had to be done in print and others had to read what you wrote and be infected by its message so that they repeat it with the same conviction that you wrote it. Getting a written document that encapsulated what the company wanted to say and provided worthwhile information to journalist was one of the toughest jobs to complete.

The agency had developed a reputation for being knowledgeable about high tech, which meant we would get most of our phone calls returned. Regis had also cultivated a relationship with editors at the New York Times, Business Week, and Fortune. On a major rollout such as the 8086, he would take a company executive to New York to meet with these contacts and brief them on what the company planned to announce. These meetings typically had to come close to the time of the actual announcements since there were no negotiating embargo dates on the information. Once the conversation took place, the publication could run with the story if they felt it was worth covering. In the wake of these meeting, besides the reporter’s note the only reminder that the meeting took place was the written materials left behind, the press release and any other background information prepared to support the announcement—major announcements at Regis typically had an accompanying backgrounder.

I arranged for coverage in the trade publications, the foremost of which was Electronics back then owned by McGraw Hill and considered the publication of record for the electronics industry. In the pecking order of other publications came Electronic Design, EDN, Computer Design, MiniMicro Systems, and the two tabloid papers of the day, Electronic News and Electronic Engineering Times. Of those I’ve mentioned the last two magazines and the first tabloid ceased publication. This was not an exhaustive list of publications but the ones that reached the audience Intel was most interested in influencing. These magazines were the forum for the engineering community the agency’s clients wanted to build a relationship with. Before the Internet, publications such as these provided the medium for conveying information about new products, technologies, and goings on in the industry.

Of these publications, Electronic News was the no-nonsense newspaper that didn’t believe in embargoed information. If they heard the story they would print it and they were constantly probing their sources for leaks on new product announcements as well as business dealings that would raise eyebrows if brought to light. This was the publication that published the hard news about the industry, the firings, criminal activity, scandals, as well as soft news: promotions, job changes, and new products launched. The tabloid hired journalism graduates and let them loose to practice their skills. The most feared reporter for Electronic News, however, was Don Hoefler a veteran newspaper journalist, who had left the tabloid before I joined the agency but had started his own newsletter.

I approached Electronics and gave them an exclusive on the announcement of the 8086 in exchange for a cover story. Once this deal was struck, I approached the other publications with article proposals as well as press materials on the new product given under agreement to observe the embargo date. The semiconductor editor for Electronics back then was LA. His immediate boss was SW, who happened to be of the old school of journalism where LA was from the more “enlightened” school, which suggested compromise if a good story would result. Regis had developed a close working relationship with everyone at Electronics, but LA was by far the easiest to work with.

LA, SW, and their west coast editor BA came to Intel to interview the major players in the rollout including the VP of marketing, the engineers who were writing the article for the publication—back then getting an article published in Electronics was looked on favorably within a company such as Intel—company founder Gordon Moore had published his now famous law in the publication nearly a decade earlier. LA was gathering information for a technical feature he would write to accompany the Intel author’s piece. The whole “dog and pony” show took the better part of a morning, after which we treated the editors to lunch with the Intel marketing manager.

In preparation for the actual product launch, GS the agency’s lone writer produced a backgrounder which explained the market for these next generation processor chips, what a microprocessor was and what it enabled to be built, and how the advent of these more powerful machines would likely impact the way we all lived our lives. GS was a great writer, an ex-Electronics editor that Regis has convinced to come to work for him. I’ve described in before in other entries, but it bears repeating that he reminded me of a medieval monk engrossed in his work putting words on paper with almost religious fervor. He had a mustache and wrote all his copy on a manual typewriter. He was a bit shorter than my five foot six inches in height, a receding hairline, the face of a press room journalist: intense concentration over a typewriter etching lines in his forehead and around his eyes—I regret not remembering the color of those eyes that often seemed to be looking inward at a story being written in his mind.

I have a Xerox copy of the double-spaced draft of the 20-something page document. When I reread it today in light of what has happened it reads like prophesy. Shortly after the announcement of the 8086, IBM decided to built its own personal computer and chose the 8088 as the engine for the system. Internally the 8088 and 8086 were identical. The one difference was the 8088 transferred data to and from its mass storage device 8 bits at a time whereas the 8086 transferred 16 bits at a time. Once IBM made their choice, the other processors available at the time began living on borrowed time. I keep looking back in time at moments that represented major forks in the road. The 8086 was one of those forks, which led to the IBM adoption, which led to where we are today.

September 26, 2005 – Love in the Time of Madness

September 26, 2005 – Love in the Time of Madness

When I visited my mom and dad at the end of April this year, I sat my dad down and asked if he would tell me how he met my mother. I had brought my tape recorder and we were sitting at the dinner table in the kitchen of my folks’ place in El Paso. We had just finished dinner and it was after 7:00 in the evening. I flipped the tape recorder to record and I started asking questions. I began by asking him how he got to the Philippines.

“I will never forget that day: the ninth day of January of 1945,” he began, “Looking out toward the ocean, all you could see was ships. I landed on White Beach, the first landing on Luzon. Leyte was the first island the Americans took and we went from there beginning the big push out of Leyte, then Mindanao, then Nigros, the last one was Luzon and my outfit went in on the tail end of the Luzon landing. They had it set up so that so many were going to each island. They knew who was going where. Luzon was the big island. We went to Luzon. Me and my motor sergeant, Hassel—we had one piece of equipment left—were the ones left behind until that last piece came off the ship.

“We landed at the break of dawn and the sun was setting when at last everything was finally taken off the ship. Once we landed, we couldn’t find our outfit and there was this one major there who said, ‘don’t worry about your outfit. Find you a place where you can dig in and secure yourself for the night and tomorrow morning we’ll get organized.’ So we dug in—he said ‘get away from that beach. The artillery will be coming down out of the mountains.

“We got set up. Hassel and I move inland a ways from the beach and dug ourselves an “L”-shaped foxhole and slept with our feet together. The Japanese like to fight at night. They had these big guns in the mountains overlooking White Beach. The night we landed, they brought those big guns out and threw all this stuff down on us and you heard the shells exploding everywhere. I was supposed to sleep for a while, wake up and relieve Hassel and let him sleep. In the days before I had been up for many nights on the ship. They would sound ‘general quarters!, general quarters!’ and we’d go up and nothing would happen and so I hadn’t had any sleep. When his time on watch came to an end, he started kicking me thinking I was dead—I was that tired.

“Next morning we started trying to find our unit. This guy with the signal corps come up to us and asks us what our shipping number was. I tell him 4916C. He says ‘jump in the jeep and I’ll take you to your unit.’ I left my truck and trailer with Ellis another guy in our outfit and I jumped into this guy’s jeep. We located our unit and they said ‘Where the hell you guys at?’ I told him and then went to get the truck and trailer and my guys.

“We set up a perimeter right on the edge of a rice paddy. I had to move my motor pool away from the company and I had to use my people to stand watch four hours apiece. I had all the gasoline and some ammunition. They didn’t want any of that where the troops were in case it blew up. Right beside my motor pool there was a little trail that had been used by everyone. Your mother got off the bus one day just after we arrive and she was thirsty and asked for a drink of water which I gave her from my canteen and we started a conversation,” he said. “That was the beginning of it—that drink of water. If she hadn’t stopped for that drink of water you would not have been here today.”

“What happened next?” I asked.

My mother jumped in. “The following day I had no money so I went to sell him my watch. I asked for a hundred pesos for the watch so we could have something to spend.”

“Your mother came back the next day after I had given her the hundred pesos,” my dad continued. “I was standing there talking to her. We had a Filipino doctor who saw us. When she left, he came over and told me ‘That’s a nice girl, why don’t you get her a hotel down in San Fabian?’ Your mother’s family was in a house across from the evacuation center. I got your mother a room in the hotel nearby and I took off to Manila. I was gone for about a week. The Japanese were in retreat and we encountered no resistance. We held up at a park outside Manila.

“While in the park, my ammunition officer—he was a demolition expert—approached me and said ‘Mac, get me about eight two-and-a-half ton trucks and a wrecker.’ We got the eight trucks and he sent us off to Bagio where the Japanese were hold up. We picked up sixteen 55-gallon drums of pure alcohol and sixteen drums of aviation gas along the way. Bagio was a city with only one way in and one way out. We got to a staging area and started charging these drums” mixing alcohol and aviation gas producing Napalm. We pulled into position above Bagio at about 2:30 or 3:00 in the morning. We got the drums unloaded and set up in different places at one end of the city. We ignited and rolled the first set of drums right down the main street of Baguio.

“As soon as these drums were detonated we set off drums rolling down two other paths on either side. With fires raging around them the Japanese occupying forces were forced out the only exit road into an ambush of 50 caliber machine guns. That was the end of the Japanese occupation of Baguio. When we got that taking care of around 10:00 AM the next day, we were sent back to our dug-in position at White beach. I got there at about 3:00 to 4:00 PM that afternoon. I got a bath and clean clothes, fatigues and I thought I went down and see your mother. I had my old boy Ellis drop me off in a jeep and come back in a couple of hours to pick me up. That was when your mother and I started our thing.”

My father’s repaired all the equipment destroyed during the fighting. “My job was direct support for the front line units,” he says proudly. “In other words you’d have a truck that got hit with a Japanese mortar and tore up the engine. And you had another that got hit in the rear end. We put the two of them together to get one good truck back in working order.” This was how he spent the remaining time in the Philippines before his unit was loaded on ships for the invasion of Japan. After returning from Bagio, his unit was moved to Damortis, the location of the army’s petroleum and gasoline dump, safely away from the remaining combat going on in and around Manila.

It was near Damortis that my father purchased a house for my mother. “I gave a guy 500 pesos for a house he owned,” my dad said. I was dumbfounded as to how he had come by all the money he was spending on my mother. “When I left New Guinea (where he was before the landing in the Philippines), I hadn’t been paid for six months or more,” he explained. “When we landed in the Philippines, we were told we were going to be exchanging our American money for Pesos. That’s how I got all that money.”

My mother and father moved into the house and lived there until near the end of summer when my father’s unit was shipped out to Japan for the occupation after the surrender. “I felt bad about leaving you and your mother alone back there,” he explains. “I gave your mother the papers for that place I had bought in Damortis, told her I would come back for the two of you. She sold the place and moved back to Manila. I knew she wasn’t going to hang around there. It was a shack but it was one of the most beautiful places. Rain wouldn’t come into it and there was a breeze that would come into the place that was out of this world. A shack down by the sea.”

My father did return, but that’s another story.

September 23, 2005 – Should Old Acquaintance Be Forgot

September 23, 2005 – Should Old Acquaintance Be Forgot

I had a great conversation with PP who is the editor of a well-known trade publication based in Cleveland. I had called to catch up on the whereabouts of folks I used to work with when I was employed at the company. We ended up talking for a good hour about a whole collection of topics beginning with the fortunes of a few of our workmates who had left the company after my departure in 1995. I had last called PP in the fall of 2001 when I had been consulting after leaving my last employer. When we worked together, I was commuting to Cleveland from San Jose once a month for a week at a time. The airline industry was healthy back then and I had frequent flyer miles accumulating on both United and American, each round trip costing under $250—how I managed that fare is another story.

I was finding plenty of time to read on the flights back and forth: SJC to ORD to CLE outbound and the reverse inbound—substituting DFW for ORD when I was on American. PP is an avid reader and I would suggest books that I found engrossing: books by William Gibson, “Unearthing Atlantic” by Charles Pellegrino, “Assembling California” by John McPhee, among others. Our conversation got round to books with my suggesting to her “The Tipping Point” by Malcolm Gladwell. We got round to this discussion when PP asked about what I had been doing. My reply was to cite the book as the reason for what I had been devoting my efforts toward in the past four years. The book likens information dissemination to the spread of a virus. I’ve been trying to see how I could use this viral infection to build brand awareness to some small success.

And the information can be anything, a fashion trend—Gladwell cites the rebirth of Hush Puppies shoes by young people in Greenwich Village making them part of their fashion. The word was spread by information outlets—people within any group who are by nature those others turn to for the latest in whatever. The Internet makes this kind of information distribution far more efficient thus accelerating the adoption and discarding of trends—the latest fashion, the hottest sound, the best movie, etc. In business, of course, the web has been taken over by marketers attempting to force this information distribution—spam—as opposed to finding ways of leveraging the natural process. The most insidious manifestation of this practice is use of people as Judas Goats in an effort to attract and infect buyers to purchase a product. The process is described in William Gibson’s latest novel “Pattern Recognition”: attractive men and women are recruited to hang out in places where upscale purchasers are likely to frequent and make a favorable mention of a product in passing. “I just bought this Sony cell phone and it’s got so many cool features,” and then if the unsuspecting stranger shows interest, going through a product demo. If the stranger gets infected and buys the phone, he’s likely to try to infect others.

The spread of a virus is dependent on carriers to infect others but all carriers are not equal. Some are far more infectious. That led us to the discussion of the article in a recent issue of “The New Yorker” about Rick Warren, the pastor in Saddleback Valley, Orange County, responsible for an evangelical movement the likes of which has not been seen since the coming of Christ. I make this gross hyperbole because of the breadth of Warren’s impact on the worldwide Christian community. As soon as I mentioned the article, PP chimed in “oh the article on Pastor Rick.” She is an avid “New Yorker” reader, too. Malcolm Gladwell wrote the article.

Warren's book “The Purpose Driven Life,” has sold 23 million copies, Gladwell estimates and his website www.pastors.com is read by pastors worldwide. But, that isn’t the real story. Warren’s teachings simply serves as a guide that is being used by uncounted numbers of small groups gathering regularly during the week to discuss their religion and what it means to their daily lives. Furthermore, the discussion is not driven by a single source, though Warren’s book serves as a reference, these groups have entirely different concerns and each addresses those concerns uniquely. Most of these groups operate autonomously from others. Warren’s book is the catalyst but each Christian group acts independently on the information. The analogy to the groups springing up in the Muslim world all over the world is eerily similar. No central leader but individual leaders in small groups infecting their own small cells. It’s like these many cells of Christian and Muslim thought forming and living amid the body of modern society.

As someone with a long career in communications, I find the phenomenon fascinating. Furthermore, the effectiveness of these groups in building a base of power has not been lost on marketers. The success of “March of the Penguins” among conservatives with its lessons of traditional values such as monogamy, sacrifice and child rearing have lead other film makers to attempt to tap into this channel as a means of promoting their work. As an aside, I liked the movie, not as a metaphor for human experience but as a wonder of nature like the salmons’ return to the spawning grounds through thousands of miles. The moviemakers saw a good story and filmed it, unlike the “Passion of Christ,” which was made for the conservative audience it found great favor with and distributed through the very marketing channels, other filmmakers are now coveting.

We did spend a good deal of time talking shop. Her magazine is doing well. As editor of the magazine, she finds herself making presentations to industry groups and at conferences her publication company sponsors—tough for a mom with three youngsters. The oldest is ten and the last time I saw her PP, her husband and the lovely newborn had joined me for dinner at a restaurant in downtown Cleveland. It was our farewell dinner after we closed the magazine the two of us had been working on. A decade and it seems only yesterday. We rang off as I told her I wouldn’t wait so long to call the next time.

September 22, 2005 – Coming of Age in Manila in the 1930s

September 22, 2005 – Coming of Age in Manila in the 1930s

My mother was born in Agoo La Union in the Philippines sometime after the turn of the 20th Century. She still likes to keep her age a secret and I’m not one to go against my mother’s wishes. I have a picture that I found on the Internet showing a school in Agoo La Union taken around the turn of the last century. It’s a black and white photo shot with a wide-angle lens. It encompasses the whole school ground and the faculty and students arranged in rows in front of the school buildings which are built on stilts, a couple of feet off the ground, five building each topped with a thatched roof, with others out of the frame. The foreground where the school body is assembled is neatly groomed and appears to be a clay surface. Where the buildings are the ground is covered with coarse grass cropped short to the ground. There is one large tree in the photo, near the building in the foreground behind the rows of students and faculty attired in white uniforms. This is my vision of the place my mother spent her early years.

I purposefully limit her time in Agoo La Union to her early years because she moved to Manila as a young girl. My mother was a young girl when her mother died. My mother’s mother was the only one left of her family, no brother or sisters nor parents or other relatives alive. My mother and her brother and newborn sister were her legacy to the world. My mother’s father, Luciano, a policeman remarried. My mother’s uncle, Domingo, also a policeman and his wife, Louisa, wanted my mother to come to live with them in Manila to provide a companion for their only child Julania, who was close in age to my mother. Juliana was seven years old and my mother was eight. Luciano acceded to Domingo’s request and my mother found herself living in Manila. I asked her if she didn’t miss her family and she said she came to think of Luciano, Louisa, and Juliana as her family. Domingo decided to give up his job as a policeman and take a position managing a mortuary for a wealthy woman owner.

Big families were the norm in the Philippines at the time. My mother’s father Luciano had a younger brother and two older sisters. Luciano remarried and had another six children: Mary, Cenon, Sabas, Cesar, Momay, George, and Cemon in addition to the three he had from my mother’s mother: Marion, Margarita and my mother. My mother’s uncle Domingo, on the other hand decided to have only one daughter, however, my mother confides in me that he was a bit of a womanizer, something his wife had surely come to accept. I learned from my mother that policemen were notorious rogues trading “favors” for forgiveness from violating the law.

The flat where my mother lived was above the funeral home on Rizal Avenue that her uncle managed. She and her cousin each had their own room “We had a lady to cook and go to the market everyday because there was no refrigerator and a man to wash the clothes—there was no washing machine,” my mother explains one Friday evening at the end of April. The lady cook was my mother’s Aunt’s cousin. The young man worked for my uncle Domingo. My mother and her cousin Juliana went to school together. Before the beginning of the school year, Uncle Domingo would take the two girls to a seamstress named Sylvia who made their school uniform. “We would have twelve uniforms made, twelve uniforms for my cousin and twelve for me,” my mother explains. “We would wear our uniforms for six months. After six months, Uncle Domingo would have new ones made. He was a great man my uncle. The uniforms were a blue skirt and a white blouse, black shoes and white socks. I carried my books in a book bag around my shoulder as my cousin and I walked the two blocks along Rizal Avenue to school from our home.”

I asked my mother to described what she remembered about her home. “It was a huge place,” she said. “You walked downstairs and pass through the caskets. Sometime I found my uncle lying in a casket fast asleep. I would jostle him and tell him to get out of there. I would get so mad at him. He would wake up and go back to work. He was the one embalming the dead. The chapel was downstairs and house where we lived is upstairs. You never heard anything upstairs because the first floor was so high. It was huge house and the bottom was like a church for funeral services.

“What became of your uncle?” I asked and she replied that he died when she was in her late teens. She said that there was talk that a spurned lover had put a curse on him and he died as a result. It was at this time my mother began to work as a typesetter in a print shop to support her family.

September 21, 2005 – Birthing a Grandbaby

September 21, 2005 – Birthing a Grandbaby

The birth of our first grandchild was a momentous occasion in the life of our family as well as in the life of the expectant parents our eldest daughter ME and her husband GS. She would represent the fourth generation—my mother and father, Nida and Mac would be great-grandparents. As ME’s pregnancy progressed apace starting in mid-1996 and proceeding to its due date in early April 1997, my wife IM and I participated as proud parents do in the major milestones along the way. We drove down for the ultrasound and proudly posted the Polaroid print—our grandchild’s first picture—on the refrigerator and smiled each time we glanced upon it each day. We kept suggesting baby names to ME, which she would consider and continue to postpone her final decision. Naming a baby with two sets of grandparents to consider is a tough job since the mother must come up with a handle that she wants and is confident will please both grandparents—or displease each equally. Thus was EM named to the pleasure of both sets of grandparents.

Our daughter and her husband lived in Costa Mesa at the time and were to deliver baby EM at Hoag Hospital, which sits atop a bluff overlooking the Pacific Ocean just above Highway 1, the Pacific Coast Highway, between Superior Avenue on the west and Highway 55—Old Newport Boulevard, on the east. In my estimation a more beautiful place to be born could not be found, though little EM could take no notice of the scenery as she pushed and shoved her way into the world. The grandparents waiting for news of progress could take comfort in the spectacular scene of the sun, bidding adieu to California in the western sky as it hurried on its way to Asia and beyond. ME and GS had made the short 10-minute trip from their house near Estancia High School to the hospital on several occasions. They also had ME’s suitcase full of things needed for her delivery at the ready. With only the two of them in their three-bedroom home, we had a room to stay overnight when IM and I came down to visit, which we did on several occasions during the nine months of ME’s pregnancy—expectant grandparents. In the final few weeks IM stayed with ME while I visited on the weekends.

In her third trimester and ME was big with child, we made plans for my parents to come out for the birth. I sent them train tickets—mom refused to fly—that would have them arrive in Los Angeles from El Paso the week before the birth. I would pick them up at the Los Angeles Union Train Station and we would visit with ME and GS for a day or so then I would take them up north so they could visit my sister SA who back then lived in San Jose not far from us. SA is my half sister from my mother’s first marriage—her father died a few years after she was born. When ME went into labor, I would drive mom, dad, and myself back down for the birth. First babies, if our daughter ME’s birth was any indication, take their time from the onset of frequent contractions.

All went according to plan. The Saturday before ME was scheduled to deliver I drove to Union Station at 800 N. Alameda Street, taking the Alameda Street Exit off Highway 101 and driving up to the grand old terminal built with the early 20th Century mission architecture that characterized the grand structures of Southern California. The entrance with its high arches, resembling an upside down “U” rising two-thirds of the way to the top of the tall imposing structure. Each of the windows to the left of the entrance had the same upside down “U” shape and rose as high. Upon entering the station, the visitor is greeted by an enormous high-ceilinged interior, decorated in the Spanish Colonial Revival and Art Deco motif popular at the time of its construction in 1939. The floor plan resembles the cross of a cathedral and the high ceiling with its enormous dark wood beam cross members, gives you the sensation of a church. I immediately remembered my childhood and experienced the same awe I felt entering the train stations of my youth. It was if I had been transported back in time.

After getting over my excitement of the building, I looked for the arrival platform noticing that the train carrying my parents had just pulled in. Not knowing what exit from the train they my alight from, I stood near the head of the line of passengers filing off the trains along its length: an enormous snake spilling its contents. After a large number of the passengers had passed me by, I noticed my mother and father slowly making their way toward the exit. I hurried to greet them hugging each in turn. I walked with the two of them slowly—age takes its time while youth hurried unmindfully along—to the baggage claim area. It took some time for their bags to be delivered and we caught up on their train trip over. My mother enjoyed having the sleeper cabin so that the two of them could stretch out and be lulled to sleep by the white noise of continuously clicking metal wheels rolling along the rails. My father enjoyed the nostalgia of the trip, recalling earlier train trips he had made in his youth. This was the first time either had traveled by train for over 30 years—the car and airplane the preferred mode of transport in the interim.

Acquiring their luggage, we loaded up and drove to Costa Mesa and the reunion with IM and their expectant granddaughter and husband. It was late afternoon on Saturday March 29th 1997 when we arrived in Costa Mesa. I had acquired a room at a nearby hotel for them to stay overnight. The following day I would drive them north to our house in San Jose. We spent that afternoon and evening catching up and feasting—though I can’t remember if we cooked an elaborate dinner at home or ordered take out.

ME was due toward the end of the following week and we had all taken bets on when the great event would occur. I drove my mom and dad to our place in San Jose. IM remained behind with ME. After spending the early part of the week in our place, mom and dad visited my sister SA and her husband BA and spent Tuesday night with them. On Wednesday evening, we all went into downtown San Jose to La Pastaia Restaurant inside the Hotel De Anza—once a derelict hotel that had fallen from its lofty perch as the premier hotel of downtown renovated to its former glory 15 years ago. My mother is not a dining-out kind of person preferring to have banquets of her preparing at home, but tonight she was dining out. My father hadn’t been out to a fancy place in many years and was questioning me about the various dishes on the menu. He inquired about polenta and I replied, “grits with Italian flavoring.” My parents got into the mood of the evening and we spent a good couple of hours catching up and discussing the impending birth.

On Thursday at around noon, I received a call from IM on my cell phone. I was having lunch with a marketing manager along with another editor from the magazine we both worked for at the time. I excused myself and took the call, hurrying back to the table and taking my leave, explaining I had a grand daughter on her way. I called my mom and dad, now back at our place and told them to get packed we were on our way down south. When I arrived I loaded everyone up with their belongings and we headed south down Highway 101, over to Interstate 5 and after one stop for gas and a second quick stop at the hotel in Costa Mesa to check my mom and dad in, we were driving into the parking lot of Hoag Hospital. A few minutes later we were all walking into the birthing room where ME, GS, and IM had already gathered along with GS’s parent LS and MS and his sister, NS. Also awaiting us were our youngest daughter RD and her significant other TF.

EM like her mother was taking her time finding her way into the world. To help her along her road ME began a regimen of pacing the hallway outside the birthing room and returning when the exertion and pain got to be too much. I had given RD my video camera and she was recording one of the walks, narrating the scene by introducing all those in attendance and describing her sister’s laboring promenade. That was early evening when the sun was just setting over the blue Pacific outside. The wait went on for hours with both sets of grandparents and my mother and father sitting in the waiting room waiting for word. Sometime early Friday morning around 4 a.m.,our grandchild finally burst into the world to the great relief of all assembled. When ME was born I was alone outside in the waiting room pacing up and down and smoking cigarette after cigarette and drinking coffee. Now a generation later, EM had an audience offering great applause to her debut.

Once we had all seen the little newborn safely being ministered to in the hospital nursery, we all congratulated one tired mommy who was longing to rest from her marathon delivery. We also gave the beleaguered dad his due for being there all the while, helping and offering the emotional support that turned a lone ordeal into a shared struggle. Once we had gotten everyone settled, I took my mom and dad to their hotel so they could get some rest. It had been a long day for the two of them. The following day we all reassembled at the hospital to finally get a chance to hold the new member of the family. My mother and father each born at the dawn of the 20th Century was holding their great grandchild as we approached the beginning of the 21st Century. I was struck by the symmetry of the scene and it gave me a great sense of peace and happiness.

When IM took little EM into her arms, I was reminded of my first sight of her holding ME in her arms at Prince George General Hospital in Cheverly Maryland. Little ME was content and quiet in her mother’s arms, looking up in wonder at her adoring parent. She had just been fed and the earth and all the planets were perfectly aligned. IM had a bright glow all about her and I saw it in my daughter as she watched those assembled around her bed taking turns holding wee EM. Though we all realized that the cycle of renewal had begun again, it was hard to see beyond the moment.

September 20, 2005 – 1965 World’s Fair

September 20, 2005 – 1965 World’s Fair

After meeting my future wife IM at the Page Two a bar in Long Beach on Long Island in the latter part of January 1965, I was intent on wooing her throughout the remaining four months before I was to be shipped to Japan for a year and a half tour of duty before I would be discharged from the U.S. Navy. IM had a room in a home in Valley Stream on Long Island, about six miles from where I lived in my room in a home in New Hyde Park. IM shared the upper floor of the house she lived in with OG, a lovely Puerto Rican woman of IM’s age. The two had become fast friends. The three of us had decided to spend a day in early may at the World’s Fair in Flushing Meadow in Queens.

New York was well out of winter and it was a warm day, but I had chosen to wear a blue sports jacket over black slacks and a white shirt. IM was decked out in a pink sheath dress with a long lightweight red overcoat. Olga chose a beige sheath dress with lightweight beige overcoat. The three of us arrive a little before noon and spent the day wandering about the 646 acres of the fair grounds trying to visit as many of the 140 pavilions we could in a day. Large corporations sponsored most of the pavilions but there were 21 state pavilions and 36 foreign pavilions, one of which, the Spanish Pavilion, we had lunch. The one dish we shared was something resembling a Filipino dish called Adobo. It was at this Pavilion that I also bought IM a bottle of perfume that she probably still has among her things and a white lace Mantilla.

The fair had a two year run; from April 22 to October 18, 1964 and from April 21 to October 17, 1965—a total of 360 days. Along with 51 million other visitors we three walked the wide and long concourse lined with the flags of all the nations of the world leading up to the Unisphere. The symbol of the fair, the Unisphere still remains today. Located near the center of the fair, the 12-story high steel globe of the world was located at the Fountain of the Continents. The globe was constructed of rings of stainless steel supplied by U.S. Steel. The rings resembled lines of latitude and longitude. Laid atop the rings were the continents of the world; the oceans being left uncovered.

We toured the Bell Telephone pavilion where it was possible to make a videophone call to San Francisco and other major cities where kiosks were set up to allow those remote locations to call guests at the fair. The line to make a phone call was too long to wait. The General Electric and Westinghouse pavilions showed us all the modern conveniences that would remove all the drudgery from housework. I can’t remember which one of the two had the ages of appliances—those of the late 1800, the more modern one of the 1920s, 1940s, 1950s, and those of the future: ranges, refrigerators, washers and dryers. We also visited the Ford, General Motors, and Chrysler pavilions to see what cars we would be driving in the future.

I had fixed OG up with a blind date, CK, some time earlier. CK was one of the students at the school I was attending. There were six sailors and four engineers from Sperry all attending the Sperry factory school in New Hyde Park. We were all destined for ships that carried this equipment on board. CK and I had become friends and he had entrusted his car to me while he went back to his home in Michigan for a week. IM and I had transportation to take us wherever we wanted to go. One of the places we went was the Steak Pub—I can’t remember where on Long Island it was. It was a steak restaurant where you selected the steak you wished to have served for your main course from a chilled display case. Once selected you chose side dishes and your choice of dressing for the wedge of lettuce that was your salad.

When CK returned I had asked OG if she wanted to double date with us. CK was a handsome blond haired college guy with an outgoing personality. Though, I didn’t realize until we were out for the evening that he had the typical super male attitude toward women. I had learned the approach didn’t work, but he seemed intent on pursuing it in his interpersonal relationships. We had dinner, then took a drive and shortly thereafter called it a night. Our outing at the World’s Fair sans CK was a far more pleasant experience.

September 19, 2005 – Making a Fantasy Come True

September 19, 2005 – Making a Fantasy Come True

I spent the first half of 1965 in New Hyde Park on Long Island going to a factory school being taught out of strip mall in New Hyde Park. I met my wife IM at a hang out in Long Beach called the Page Two. A DJ played dance music a couple of nights each week and I came to find the place by a most circuitous route. In New York State in 1965, the drinking age was 18, which I had just turned in November of 1964. I found my new enfranchisement liberating as I pictured myself a sophisticated young man about town. I had a job that paid far too much money for my own good. I was receiving the pay of E-3 enlisted man in the U.S. Navy, but what was really funding my new lifestyle was the monthly per diem I was receiving to live on the civilian economy, which increased my monthly take home by two to three fold—I just remember now.

Most of this new found wealth was finding its way to Manhattan as I made a habit of taking the train into the city every weekend since late January when I had first arrived. The only thing that was missing from this sophisticated image I had of myself was a beautiful girl to enjoy the city with. I wasn’t finding the girl of my dreams in any of the bars in midtown Manhattan where I spent most of the day on Saturday and Sunday for the first couple of weekends after arriving. I was in school with two other sailors John and Ken. We each had rooms in homes in New Hyde Park, but I usually went to the city alone.

In New Hyde Park, however, the three of us hung out at a bar nearby the homes where we lived. The bar was on Jericho Turnpike near New Hyde Park Road. The houses we had rooms in were a few blocks west of New Hyde Park Road and a few blocks north of Jericho Turnpike. The food specialty of the bar was its pizza and burgers and fries. And of course they served plenty of alcoholic refreshments to accompany the greasy food, beer being the most popular with us. The one other attraction of this bar was its pool table in the back room. As I recalled you entered the place and its long bar with stools lined the wall to the right of the entrance. The kitchen was opposite the entrance. Through a door in a wall behind the tables on your left in front of the bar was the room housing the bar’s one pool table, which was busy most nights.

We typically hung out in the poolroom where John usually held sway. With a pool cue in his hand, John was an artist. He could break a rack of balls and when he got a ball to drop on the break would typically run the table right up to and including the 8 ball. Even with several beers in him, he could still work his magic with cue stick and ball. His ability to play several shots in sequence was something to admire. He would play one ball and he would ensure the placement of the cue ball afterwards made the next shot an easy one. Ken and I would try to keep up with him to no avail. The locals soon learned that he would hustle them and so stopped playing him for money. There were plenty of others who would come in and take him on for $5 to $10 a ball. John had an uncanny ability to win at pool and he let everyone know so no one could complain when he took their money.

When I would return from Manhattan on a Saturday or Sunday night, I would stop at the bar for a final beer before calling it a night. I soon got to know the locals who made the bar their own. I had befriended a young couple and learned they had been going together since high school and planned to get married the following year. I think it was the young man who was hesitant to completely commit. He was enjoying the courtship too much. One Saturday evening upon returning from the city, I found the couple at the bar and I sat next to them. They asked what I had done during the day and I explained that I had walked around Manhattan during the day and had a few drinks before catching a train back. I had learned from John that a good drink to order was a Rob Roy, which had become my standard reply to “what would you like?”. This was a step up from the Whiskey Sour—a lady’s drink though IM fancied Rye and Ginger—that I drank illegally in San Francisco at a bar that turned a blind eye to underage sailors.

I was close to being drunk when I left the city and by the time I reached the bar, I still had a buzz that was probably noticeable in my speech, the beer I was having wasn’t helping either. I was feeling forlorn and frustrated at not having someone to enjoy this fantasy with me and said as much to the young couple. They were both having a great time watching me explained the sad state of my life for them. The young girl finally took pity on me and asked why I was spending so much time looking for someone in Manhattan when my chances were so much better on Long Island. Other than the bar we were in, I didn’t have a clue where I could go to meet single unattached women. She replied that I needed to go to the Page Two in Long Beach. The young woman suggested I go on Tuesday. And I said I would.

I spent Monday wishing it over, something I’ve stopped doing in my old age—time is too precious to wish it past. On Tuesday evening, I took the bus from New Hyde Park to Long Beach and found the Page Two. Inside the place was mobbed, with the music of the early 1960s blaring at high volume: “The Peppermint Twist,” “Oh What A Night,” “Bye Bye Baby,” and many others time has hidden away. I wandered about for a good hour asking one or two girls sitting along or with others to dance. I got turned down more times than I got accepted. I was getting a bit disappointed when I saw IM sitting alone at the bar watching the other dancers on the floor. I walked up to her and asked her to dance. She accepted and we spent the rest of the evening dancing together, fast songs and slow songs, the latter being my favorite.

After our first dance, she asked my name and I replied and I asked hers. As soon as she replied I asked about her accent and she replied Scottish. She asked about my name and I replied it was Irish. She quickly corrected me saying that it was a very well know Scottish name, the clan to which the name belonged had their home on the Isle of Skye and I realized that my family had been living under the misguided notion all these years that their great ancestor was over from the Emerald Isle and not Caledonia. To say I was smitten would be a gross understatement. I was head over heels. I asked her out the following weekend and she accepted. Thus began four months of my realizing a fantasy that I had carried in my head since first learning I would be going to Long Island for five months.

September 18, 2005 – Gathering and Celebrating The Generations

September 18, 2005 – Gathering and Celebrating The Generations

One of the traditions of homecoming at our home in El Paso is the gathering of everyone except my mom and dad around the dinner table around 8:00 PM or so to engage in a game of Uno. At this homecoming on Sunday evening October 28, 2001, we had all three of my sisters, YM the oldest, CM, the middle child, and DD the youngest. In addition there were my wife IM, our two daughters ME and RD and their two husbands GS and TF, respectively. Our granddaughter EM was watching the adults play and my mom and dad were watching television, occasionally walking by and taking in the action around the dinner table for a while.

Uno is one of those card games that goes on forever and it encourages players to screw their neighbors. Each player is dealt a hand of seven cards with the remaining ones placed face down to form a “draw” pile. The top card of the “draw” pile is turned over to begin a “discard” pile. There are 19 each of blue, green, red, and yellow cards, each numbered from 0 to 9. In addition there are eight “Draw 2” cards, two each in blue, green, red, and yellow; another set of eight “Reverse” cards two each of the four colors in the deck; and a third set of eight “Skip” cards two each in the four colors. Finally, there are four “Wild” cards and Four “Wild Draw 4” cards.

Play begins with the first player looking at the “Discard” stack and matching the color or number on the face up card. The object of the game is to rid yourself of all you cards, while everyone around you is trying to do the same and concurrently trying to ensure their neighbors are not getting rid of cards but are amassing more. To ensure that your neighbors on either side acquire cards is the job of the “Draw” cards. Another means of forcing your neighbor to acquire cards is to discard a card they are not likely to be able to play on. If the next person in the flow of the game lacks a card with the color or number matching the discard showing and also lacks a “Wild” card that can allow him to match any discard, the player must continue to draw a card from the “Draw” pile until he finds one he can play. To annoy your neighbor on either side is the job of the “Reverse” and “Skip” cards. These cards, which come in the four basic colors, can be placed on the “Discard” pile to match the color showing—the player gets to discard while screwing his neighbor.

Games of Uno can go on for some time especially with a large number of players. You can also imagine the language that accompanies the game play as one player drops a “Draw 4” wild card on his/her neighbor. The other dynamic of the game is that everyone tends to gang up on the person with the smallest number of cards in his/her hand, singling them out for a “Draw 4” or “Reverse” or “Skip” card. The other aspect of the game is to shout “Uno” when you discard the second to the last card in your hand. Failure to do so results in anyone at the table yelling “Uno” while pointing an accusatory finger at the clueless player. The result is the clueless player must pick up two cards from the “Draw” pile.

The game’s greatest pleasure comes from the constant back and forth of players screwing one another as the game progresses. Among our daughters, their husbands, and IM and me, the game has always been a friendly rivalry that produces hours of laughs. Adding my three sisters to the game increases the laughter, especially as the youngest of my sisters bicker back and forth. CM, the middle sister is the one with the temper, which for the most part she keeps in check. The youngest one is the one that tends to niggle mercilessly during Uno. It starts out innocent enough, but over the course of the evening, CM’s annoyance grows and grows and finally she has enough, jumps up from the table with a face of great annoyance and DD attempting to suppress her uncontrollable giggling leaves the room to get control of herself. CM usually relents though this evening, she has to throw something to vent and play resumes.

My oldest sister is the diplomat of the three, mediating between the two younger ones to keep the peace. Engaging in a game of Uno with my three sisters, I’m reminded of my three siblings’ temperament and how we related to one another growing up. The game has removed the edge that youth had honed to razor sharpness. We’re young children again each with our own natures, clashing or complementing that of the others. DD and I were both provocateurs, picking on YM and CM. I’ve realized the error of my ways and now play Uno with my sisters as I play with my daughters: less concerned with winning and more with the engagement. YM is of the same mind, but DD, however, still plays to win.

Curiously, CM was once the “activities director” for the family get togethers, but that changed some years back and DD took on the responsibility. Each of my sisters is a “control freak” as am I. We tend to think in terms of being the only one who knows how something should be: what the correct wine to serve with dinner, for example—my contribution this year. CM is the master of the meal—a position she acquired when cooking became a bit too overwhelming for my mother. Like my mother CM’s sense of nurture is providing sustenance and ensuring everyone eats well. DD and CM are both nurses, but DD is the one who has become the modern day version of family “healer” to our daughters ME and RD, who have consulted her on the many ailments. CM has also become the “healer” to my mother and father, regulating their medications, taking their blood pressure on a regular base. She has also ministered to me: chiding me on my high-fat, high cholesterol diet; putting me on the treadmill at her cardiac care facility; checking my cholesterol level in blood work; and being the inspiration for my 30-year running regimen.

My sister YM is the one responsible for my parents’ well-being in all other matters. When my mother was hospitalized for an extended period some years back, it was YM who managed the emotional roller coaster my mother and father and CM rode throughout the time. She also managed the concerns of my youngest sister and I from our distant perches on either side of the country. YM is the one everyone turns to in a crisis. She seems to be able to keep her head and get everyone through the day when no one wants to make the journey.

We don’t get together in large family gathering as much now that ME and RD have babies of their own. The last time we were together, my parents’ newly expanded home was just large enough to contain the lot of us—including our first grandbaby EM. Now with four grandbabies, the house has become too small to contain all three generations, though somehow we will have to find a way to do so. Time gives us all deadlines whether we want them or not and coming together to celebrate ourselves while all of us are around to do so is an engagement we cannot postpone.

September 15, 2005 – Sunday Dinner in El Paso Oct. 2001

September 15, 2005 – Sunday Dinner in El Paso Oct. 2001

My three younger sisters are a study in contrasts. The oldest YM, the tallest of the three, about five foot six inches, thin as a reed and an attractive clotheshorse, is outgoing and methodical. At the end of October 2001 when we were having our homecoming, she was then the events manager at the El Paso International Airport Hilton Hotel and 9/11 had just put her employer in jeopardy. She, however, had already seen the writing on the wall and was interviewing for a position across the road at the airport and was pretty assured of getting it—she did, shortly after we left. YM is the only other of my siblings with a child, my niece CP, a lovely twenty-something woman a few years younger than our daughters ME and RD. CP was just completing her degree in fine arts at the University of New Mexico in Las Cruces and working as a bartender making lots of money in tips. She aspires to write and her job offers plenty of grist for her mill.

My middle sister, CM, is the sergeant major of the family—she did spend time in the military, an officer for a few years. She chose a career in medicine after high school and after leaving the military took up cardiac care where she remains until this day. She is my mother’s height—which is to say around five foot three inches—and build—petite enough to wear girl sizes in clothes. Her small size, however, belies an iron will and a hot-tempered nature that time has only managed to slightly moderate. When she smiles, though, she is as lovely as an angel, an image I’m sure recovering heart patients are sure to have seen upon waking from open heart surgery. However, the image changes once in rehab, when she has him up on his feet walking on a treadmill and longing to end the torture only to have her urging them on for just a few more minutes—and not politely I might add.

The youngest of my three sisters is the free spirited one who reminds me of a bee, buzzing about from one flower to another. When ME and RD were young, Aunt DD was the one who hauled them around to movies and to activities she was sure they would enjoy. There is a video of her taken at a horse stable somewhere in the outskirts of El Paso. Three riders are on horseback, YM and her husband back then KP and DD. From the start of the short four-minute clip, DD is the one smacking KP’s horse to get him to run, urging on the other two to do something or another. DD now lives in Massachusetts and comes down to El Paso regularly to visit. She’s usually the one exhorting everyone to fix a date on their calendar to meet. She is responsible for this gathering, though her original suggestion was Thanksgiving or Christmas, which we all nixed because of the great pain and expense of traveling during the holidays. DD is about CM’s height with a slim build that demands petite lady sizes.

As you might not imagine from the descriptions above, the family’s fetish is food. My mother survived the Second World War in the Philippines when providing food for yourself and those around you was a constant struggle during the occupation. My mother proved very resourceful and managed to keep those around her well fed. I suspect that experienced colored her whole view of nurture in life. She spent our childhood exhorting us to eat well beyond the point our appetites were satisfied. We all resisted including my father though not without the scars of guilt from refusing our mother’s constant entreaty to nourish ourselves least we waste away.

When all of us get together there is a subtle dynamic that takes place. CM takes charge of all meal preparation. Not only is she the best cook of the three, but she has the organization to cook for the large group—assigning her siblings tasks such as cooking the turkey or making a dessert, while she prepares a variety of side dishes. Meal preparation begins the night before, in this case the Saturday we arrived, October 27th. YM had the task of cooking the turkey in her oven in her house to free up CM’s oven at her place for the baking she had planned—a couple of her side dishes called for baking in the process. CM assigned DD to prepare a couple of side dishes in my mother’s kitchen. In the course of the handing out of orders, DD occasionally forgets herself and makes suggestions contrary to CM’s dictates incurring the stern look of disapproval from CM and backing down accompanied by nervous laughter and the general amusement of the onlookers.

The following day, the preparation of the meal continues once breakfast has been cleared away. Breakfast for six additional guests besides mom and dad is a daunting task but ably handled by mother’s long time companion AV, who has been assisting my parents for over a decade and has become one of the family. AV speaks English about as well as we all speak Spanish, my mother and older sister being the exception. Both are fluent enough to explain themselves in the language and to understand any objections that might be raised in Spanish. AV prepares a breakfast of eggs, hominy grits, bacon, and toast with margarine instead of butter—my parents are watching their cholesterol. My youngest sister DD joins the other out-of-town visitors but the other two have begun the meal, beginning with CM stuffing of the turkey and ceremonially delivering the engorged fowl to YM who has preheated her oven in anticipation. Once completed, they join the brunch party taking coffee and participating in the conversation going on around the breakfast table. Lots of jabs at the two husbands, the brunt of jokes as they are the outsiders being made to feel welcome by being treated as badly with verbal abuse as we’ve been continually treating one another over the years.

The great pity is that my sisters and I have little in common other than our parents and our childhood. We have each gone our separate ways. But when we get together we renew the bonds and become up to date with what is going on in one another’s lives. When we are not reviving old jokes, we exchange updates on where each of us is in our lives. And my two older sisters brings us all up to date on the goings on with our parents, what new ailments they are experiencing—my father was getting over hip replacement surgery and my mother was dealing with her meds. The other subject of conversation is the state of Charles Upton—my father’s long time friend, who lives up the street. In recent years, he has become increasingly immobile and requiring more in-home care. AV has been enlisted for his care, a job she has taken to with relish. Between Mr. Upton and my parents AV has a full time job. She’s the breadwinner for her family a husband in Juarez and a daughter living with AV’s sister in El Paso and going to school on this side of the border. Each generation plants deeper roots on this side of the border.

AV is a stout soul with a warm maternal nature and a childlike innocence and joie de vivre. I’ve yet to see her without a smile and a twinkle in her large brown eyes. She has strong shoulders and bears her burden without complaint or self-pity. Like Mr. Upton AV has become part of the family and my parents are involved in her life, providing her loans at little or no interest to help her through financial hardships and doing other kindnesses that they afford all who are close to them. In return, AV is a hard worker who never complains and who has formed a strong bond with my mother and Mr. Upton, who to his delight, she treats like a small child as she cleans his place and makes his meals.

The Sunday tradition is that Mr. Upton joins my parents for dinner. AV has the day off, thus Mr. Upton becomes my father’s charge and cooking and cleaning become the tasks for my dad and/or my sisters. With the six visitors on this particular Sunday, AV came in this morning to help with breakfast but has the rest of the day off and the out of town guests will provide extra hands to clean up afterwards. With as many as ten guests for dinner and the occasion unexpected guest showing up at dinner time and finding themselves compelled to join the dinner—I cannot remember anyone who has managed to leave without taking something to eat. The likely guests popping in include our uncle SI, or our neighbors one block over—they typically come around knowing there’s food and expecting to join in. He is ER and in his 90s and she is 30 years his junior and my mother’s ex-sister-in-law, ME. I’ll tell their story another time.

CM arrives around 4:00 and begins to set up for the feast. She begins bringing over side dishes she has prepared and barking orders to DD to help set up the buffet table. YM is being directed to make final preparations: remove the turkey from the oven and let it cool a bit before bringing over. The dinner plates are brought out and set up at the end of the dinner table along with silverware and dinner napkins. Orders are barked about getting TV trays set up in the living room to accommodate the diners. With the arrival of the turkey, the wine bottles are opened and dispensed in glasses and handed to all the guests. My father takes the carving knife in hand and has us all say grace before he begins slicing up pieces of dark and light meat. Once grace has been said, I offer a toast and the wine glasses are raised and everyone drinks to the “wish for better times in the wake of the bad times we’ve had”. The meal begins in earnest with everyone finding their TV tray placing their wine glass down and lining up and beginning the march through the serving line.

As the meal progresses, everyone finds themselves chatting away between bites with those around them. I’m asking CP about school, her latest boyfriend, and her plans for after school. IM, ME, and RD are gabbing with DD about the latest development in holistic medicine. DD, once a delivery room nurse has since become employed by a Russian doctor who has a practice in a suburb of Boston. Though once a conventional MD, he now applies holistic medical remedies in combination or instead of Western medicine. And DD has become his girl Friday. My father and Mr. Upton are talking away about financial matters—Mr. Upton’s continuing interest in life is money and how best to conserve it. My daughters’ husbands are conversing with one another and occasionally joining the conversation between Mr. Upton and my father. My other two sisters are listening to the conversation I’m having with my niece and injecting comments as we talk. My mother sits with a contented smile picking at her meal. She seems to be engrossed in the scene of everyone eating. She is also chatting with her brother, SI, in Tagalog, the language of their youth and their land.

September 12, 2005 - The Homecoming

September 12, 2005 - The Homecoming

Just after the September 11 disaster, I was let go by the company I was working for and found myself with some idle time on my hands. My wife IM and I decided to invite our daughters ME and RD, their husbands and our first grandbaby, ME’s daughter EM to accompany us to El Paso to visit the family matriarch and patriarch. They were in the mid-80s now but back then were just entering that age group. Dad had just added a second story to the house my sisters and I grew up in and he wanted to show it off to his grandkids and the rest of us. The second floor added four bedrooms and two baths, just enough so everyone would have a bedroom with one to spare, which was taken by my youngest sister DD who was coming down from Boston.

My other two sisters still live in El Paso, though both did their bit of traveling before concluding that El Paso was where they wanted to be. There is a great passage from the Carlos Castenada series of books about the Yaqui Indian medicine man, where he tells the author that ever man has a place on earth and each of us knows where it is—it’s a badly constructed paraphrase but I think I captured the essence of what the old man was trying to say. Despite the fact that Castenada has been found out to be a fraud, creating the Yaqui Indian from his imagination, I think he hit the mark about each of us having a place we want to live and die. My dad and mom and two sisters know where it is as do my wife IM and I.

My father has a classic square face, a chin that does not come to a point but spreads at the bottom; his straight nose from its tip rising at a 30-degree angle to his forehead splitting two sockets housing his blue eyes. His ears are close to his head but are a just a bit larger than normal—you would think it would allow him to hear better, but truth be told, he’s hard of hearing and resists wearing a hearing aid. His forehead forms a cliff to this skull rather than a ski slope. And his hairline of slightly wavy thinning blond Aryan hair has receded from the cliff face. He has a gentle smile that displays most of his original teeth. The intense edge of the younger man I grew up with has been replaced with the gentle, sentimental and wise man I now know as my father.

The top of my petite mother’s head barely reaches above my father’s heart—he stands just under six foot tall. Mother has an oval fare with wide cheekbones, a nose that flares slightly, the full lips characteristic of Filipinos, a more pointed chin, and almond-shaped brown eyes. As a young woman, she had long thick black hair. Now grey, she wears it short and resists the persistent appeal from friends to have it dyed. My two parents have grown to resemble one another over time. I brought my new video camera along to document them telling us about their early life before meeting one another.

Our daughters and their families chose to fly down: ME, her husband GS, and daughter EM from Oakland and RD and her husband TF from Orange County. Still upset about the Twin Towers crash, IM was reluctant to fly so we decided to drive down. It was a drive I enjoyed making. And we could leave on Friday, a day ahead of the girls who had to leave on Saturday to avoid taking off work on Friday. They had taken Monday off instead. We had all chosen to go the weekend before Halloween, which fell on the following Tuesday. RD and TF flying America West were arriving first at around 3:30 PM on Saturday. ME, GS and EM were arriving an hour or two later on Southwest. Both flights were stopping in Phoenix.

IM and I set out on Friday October 27th heading south on Interstate 5, circumventing Los Angeles by taking Interstate 210 east meandering south of Highway 57 to join up with Interstate 10. We made good time down I-5 but hit Los Angeles right at rush hour and though we took, I-210, we caught plenty of pockets of slow and go traffic even in the car pool lane. We turned south on Highway 57 to pick up I-10 East. We thought we would clear the congestion once we reach I-10 but the rush hour extended along I-10 through San Bernardino, finally giving way to open road at Banning. We zoomed through Indio about 7:00 PM Friday evening arriving in Blythe 90 miles or so east on I-10 just before 9:00 PM. We had reservations at the Hampton Inn, 900 Hobsonway.

We had driven non-stop since leaving San Jose at 9:00 AM and IM and I slept the sleep of travelers who had journeyed long. The great benefit of a good nights’ sleep is waking refreshed the next day ready for the road ahead. Waking at 6:00 we grabbed a quick bite to eat at the Courtesy Coffee Shop near the Hampton Inn, then headed east. From Blythe to Phoenix four-lane Interstate 10 stretches 150 or so miles straight as a crow flies. That morning the road bore light traffic and I eased the accelerator down to the floor getting our four-door European touring sedan up over 90 MPH and kept it there in between clumps of traffic where I would slow to get around the bunch of cars then resume speed.

We made Phoenix in just over two hours, but lost an hour due to the time change. It was about 10:00 when we got through Phoenix and began the run to Tucson, Arizona Highway Patrol more prevalent along this stretch of I-10 so I kept the speedometer between 80 and 85 MPH which got us through Tucson just around 11:30. From Tucson we were headed east toward Lordsburg, New Mexico 160 miles east. Through eastern Arizona and western New Mexico I-10 is a fast, lightly patrolled stretch of highway and I was able to get back up over 90 MPH for long stretches of road. Two hours later we had put Lordsburg in our rearview mirror and were on our way to Las Cruces.

We made the curve in I-10 south at Las Cruces just before 3:00 and were heading south along the Rio Grande toward the New Mexico-Texas border. At about 3:30 we saw the familiar landmark for of the ASARCO smelter smoke stack and were curving around past the University of Texas at El Paso on the left side of Interstate. We exited I-10 at the North Piedras Street exit and head north to my parents home in Morningside Heights. Just as we neared the house we get a phone call from RD asking us when we might arrive. IM said any second now and we honked the horn at the gate of my parents’ home.

The homecoming ritual at our El Paso home is to eat and my mom and her long time companion Ava had prepared a lunch-dinner meal of adobo chicken—a Filipino delicacy, rice, gravy, broccoli, and potato salad. We sat about the table catching up on our travels realizing that we would repeat this ritual once ME and her gang arrived, but looking forward to being together yet again.

I’ll continue in the next installment of the blog describing the events of this visit with the parents, and the game we played well into the night on Saturday and the conversation we had the following day about Tom Lea, the El Paso born novelist and artist who had passed away earlier.

September 11, 2005 – Going Places and Coming Home

September 11, 2005 – Going Places and Coming Home

It was a week ago today that my wife IM and I returned from our 4-day weekend in Irvine, California. We spent Sunday with our daughter RD and her husband TF and our granddaughter AF and grandson TF, a housewarming for their new place and an early celebration of RD’s birthday. Their home is in a new subdivision on the hills east off the Avenida Vista Hermosa exit from Interstate 5. For the occasion, IM and I went to Costco and bought a 2.5-lb beef tenderloin strip and a couple of bottles of Veuve Clicquot Brut Yellow Label—all great occasions call for bottles of good French Champagne. When we welcomed into our lives our first grandchild EM, we bought a Jeroboam of Bollinger and a larger tenderloin of beef—we had more guests. Our eldest daughter ME and her husband GS—EM’s parents—lived in Costa Mesa back then.

RD and her husband both work in the construction industry, one of the larger employers in Orange County. Land is one of the most valuable commodities in California and one family that owned a great deal of it was the Irvine family. In 1878, James Irvine had amassed 110,000 acres of property in and around the city that today bears his name. The land stretched 23 miles from the Pacific Ocean—stretching from Newport Bay to Laguna Beach up to Santa Ana Canyon and the boundary of the Cleveland National Forest. In 1893, his son, James Irvine, Jr. came into full possession of the property, which he incorporated into the Irvine Company in 1894. RD worked for the Irvine Company shortly after graduating from UC Irvine, which is built on 1000 acres the company donated to the University of California in 1959. The name Irvine goes a long way in Orange County. Today RD works for a small local builder developing land in the Inland Empire—north and east of Riverside and her husband works for a larger builder with developments throughout the southwest. When we get together, the talk is about new developments going up, the price of land in various parts of the state and country, the market for houses, and the latest in home upgrades—granite countertops, marble floors, kitchen and bath fixtures, and all the other touches that make new homes appealing to home buyers.

IM and I have considered relocating to Orange County, which is quite different—far more regimented—from the Bay Area: homeowners’ associations—some communities with more than one, Mello-Roos taxes, postage stamp size home lots, and more continuously busy freeways and concrete and asphalt arteries than you can imagine. We usually experience the freeway lifestyle when we drive down on a Friday before a long weekend. We typically make the mistake of taking Interstate 405 around Los Angeles. In the process, we experience all the chokepoints on the high-speed freeway from Highway 101 south through Interstate 10 to just beyond LAX—the carpool lane is of little consequence because it ceases just north of I-10 until you reach LAX, where it resumes. On the drive down last week we circumvented the snarl by taking Interstate 210 east through Pasadena to Interstate 605 south into Orange County. In Orange County, residents spend a good part of their day in cars—getting back and forth to work and buying the staples needed to get through every day. It’s a place where you drive to exercise, take a walk or go for a bike ride. Northern California is no different, but seems so in that we spend less time driving places during the day—perhaps we drive so much in Southern California because we are not at home.

This trip down we did spend time in a condo we own in Irvine. It’s off I-405 north of the I-5 and I-405 “Y” near Highway 133 on its way to Laguna Beach. The climate in Irvine is similar to Northern California, fog in the morning, turning to a warm summer day by mid-afternoon, giving way to fog in the evening as the on-shore flow from the ocean kicks in. On days when there is a battle between fog and sun, you notice the elevated levels of humidity. Living in our own place did make Southern California seem different to us. We shopped for grocery items at an Albertson’s close by. We picked up household goods at a target two exits north on I-405. We had dinner in a small Italian restaurant near the Target. On Monday after taking a drive down the Pacific Coast Highway and then onto I-5 for a spin back and forth to San Diego, we had an early dinner in San Juan Capistrano at the Cedar Creek Inn just off I-5 west at the Ortega Highway Exit.

Living in a sparsely furnished Condo—bed in master bedroom but little else—was an adventure. We had no television but I had brought along a boom box with radio, CD, and cassette. We listened to music and news from a local PBS station. We purchased a couple of folding chair from Target, the only seats in the condo except for the bed. IM preferred lounging on the carpeted stairs to read. She was determined to get through Kathy Reichs mystery “Monday Mourning.” I had brought along Michael Drosnin’s opus, “Citizen Hughes,” which I read sitting on the floor—I manage to get about a quarter of the way through. Though I had brought along my laptop we were isolated from the Internet because the condo’s telephone and cable service had been turned off a couple of weeks earlier. The laptop’s built in WiFi was picking up wireless networks but wasn’t able to log on and surf the web on someone else’s nickel. What we did do however, was bring along a NetFlix movie, “Bagdad Cafe” and we bought two DVDs at Target “How to Loose a Guy in 10 Days” and “Gladiator.” We watched the NetFlix movie on Saturday night and the other two on Monday, finishing up after midnight and realizing we had an early morning on Tuesday as our daughter RD was stopping by to pick up the key to the condo on her way to work.

We did wake early just before RD arrived, got packed, had the key exchanged, hugged our baby girl—how can she be thirty something—loaded up IM’s car and headed north on I-405. I had driven north from Orange County in early June after driving down in a rental car for a trade show my company participated in. I was a lone commuter then without access to the carpool lane. This time with IM in the passenger seat, the commute should go faster and it did: up I-405 to I-605 north to I-210 and west through Pasadena, which is one of the more confusing roads to drive as you must exit I-210 to remain on the freeway, out of the car pool lane across six lanes of traffic to reach the exit. We managed and afterwards find a completely open road all the way to its terminus at I-5, where we head north through Santa Clarita and beyond to Castaic. From there we head toward Gorman as I-5 climbs over the Tehachapi Range by way of Tejon Pass. When we came down on Saturday Tejon Pass was ablaze with a wildfire that closed the road after we had gotten through. On the way back over the pass, we saw the blackened remains of the fire’s aftermath. The fire seemed to have been contained without affecting the nearby towns of Frazier Park and Lebec.

Once over the pass we headed down the Grapevine toward the restaurants and gas stations at the bottom of the grade. There’s a Denny’s on the eastern side of the Interstate where we stopped for breakfast. It was a little before 11:00 and already it was warm outside as we step out of IM air-conditioned four-door sedan. You can’t complain about a Denny’s meal as you should know what to expect when you go in. We were not disappointed, nor were we surprised. The young girl working the register asked where we were heading. “San Jose,” I replied, “another three hours on I-5.” She asked what the weather was like there. I said, “fog in the morning but hot in the afternoon especially this time of year, much like here.” She replied that she liked the heat, nice and dry so it doesn’t feel muggy. She wished me a good trip and I said thanks. I remember being young once—about her age—and working in a coffee shop near El Paso International Airport. I would watch travelers come and go. I wondered if she felt as I did: how nice it would be to be going somewhere, anywhere other than where I was. Since that time, I’ve been doing a lot of going other places. We were now on our way back on one such and three hours later had returned home.

September 9, 2005 – Love Affairs with Cars

September 9, 2005 – Love Affairs with Cars

I had trouble with my car, a 1998 European 4-door, touring sedan that I treated myself to after the last publishing company I worked for was sold to a large European publishing concern. I’ve kept the car because I really like driving it and it’s got the smoothest ride of any car I’ve ever owned. And I’ve owned many since I turned 21. I think of each as ex-girlfriends that I had a wonderful affair with until I met a younger more attractive model that stole my heart. I didn’t so much have buyer’s remorse when I left the dealership as I felt I had betrayed a long time companion. I know, cars are inanimate objects with no feelings, but I can’t help feeling the emotion. Some of this is probably due to my father never getting rid of any car he has ever owned. In his case, he has a harem of past companions that will be spared the junkyard crusher perhaps for some time to come. He’s willed them to my brother Danny, who like my father has a soft spot for mechanical playthings, particularly old ones.

My European car has over 115,000 miles and it still runs well, but it’s beginning to show its age. An oil leak and faulty taillight took me to the repair shop two weeks ago. I get the car out of the shop only to have the air-conditioning fan go out. The repair shop at the dealership wanted an arm and a leg so I found an independent repair shop on Winfield Avenue that specializes in European cars. Since my dealer had pinpointed the problem at no charge, I brought the car to the Winfield Avenue shop, told him the problem I needed fixed and asked for an estimate: half of what the dealer estimated the repairs would run. On this particular car model, the blower motor is located behind the dashboard, which means that the entire dashboard had to be removed to replace the faulty module. That was two weeks ago today. He kept the car until the following Wednesday and in the meantime I had the pleasure of driving a Chevrolet Cavalier from Enterprise Rent-a-Car at Almaden Expressway and Blossom Hill Road.

Of the earlier cars my wife IM and I have owned our first and second held special places in our hearts. Our second car was a forest green 1972 Pontiac Station Wagon, with three rows of seats. We bought the car on one of our trips from Dallas to El Paso to visit my folks. I had used vacation to extend a weekend a couple of days and IM and I started talking about the 130,000-plus miles we had put on our first car a 1967 Buick Grand Sport, 2-door coupe. We drove everywhere. It was our one form of entertainment. We had contemplated the change after our youngest daughter RD was born. We needed a bigger car to carry our two daughters and all their “things.” Our eldest ME was four years old and loved to play around in the back seat—this was before mandatory child seats and seat belt laws. Now she had two seats to roam around in. We had arrived in El Paso Saturday evening June 3rd 1972. On that Sunday, IM and I decided to start looking at new cars. Our first stop was Fred Schneider Pontiac on Montana Avenue near the El Paso International Airport, long since gone. The salesman showed us the new green station wagon. It was a pretty car. We took a test drive. It rode well and handled nicely. We came back and began bickering over the price. We must have sat in the salesman’s office for a good hour as he brought three different offers to us, none of which we accepted.

IM does not do well in negotiating sessions. She gets angry, frustrated, and wants to leave. Each time the salesman left to take the offer to the sales manager, she would say, “let’s go.” After the salesman returned the third time and the offer was no nearer our price, we said “thanks” and left taking the paper with his last offer with us. We went back to my parents’ place for a while to think over the days’ events. It was mid afternoon and dinner wasn’t for a while. After talking it over with my dad, IM and I decided to try another couple of dealers now that we had an offer we could use to bargain with. Our first stop was an Oldsmobile dealership on Montana—I think the name was Horn Oldsmobile. The salesman had “just the car for us,” he exclaimed once we told him what we were looking for. It was a new station wagon that had been used by the owner’s wife for a short time. It had low mileage and would carry the full warranty beginning from the mileage on the odometer. It was a two-tone red in color—I can’t recall the second color—with a couple of extra features the Pontiac lacked. Its one drawback was it didn’t have the third seat—why that was important to us, I can’t recall, since we couldn’t think of putting the kids that far back in the car. We needed to be able to grab them when they misbehaved and they would be out of reach in the rear.

When the salesman presented his first offer—a few $100 more than the Pontiac—we left and went to Nance Buick Company on Montana. It was the dealership where we bought the Buick we planned to trade in. When they realized that the car was one they had sold, the salesman said he was sure they could come up with something that we would like. We looked at a couple of station wagons they had on the lot and settled on a blue one with the same features as the Pontiac we’d seen first. After the ritual of the test drive and returning to the salesman’s office we waited for the mechanics to check over the Buick we were trading in. Once the evaluation of the buick was complete, the salesmen returned with his paperwork. He presented us with his offer for an out-the-door price, after considering our trade in, that was less than the Oldsmobile but more than the Pontiac. IM and I were not attached to either car by this time and would have taken either if they came up with the right price. We showed him the price we’d been quoted by the Pontiac dealer and he excused himself while he took the offer to his sales manager to see what they could do. I think that all new car negotiation involve some amount of waiting to wear the buyer down. After what seemed like a long time, the salesman returned with an offer that matched the one from the Pontiac dealer.

IM and I looked at one another and both said “thanks, no” and left. We had had it for the day. We had determined that it was time to quit looking for the day and reevaluate whether we wanted to take on a new car payment or not. After dinner Sunday evening, my dad suggested we return first thing Monday morning—we planned to return to Dallas on Tuesday—to the Pontiac dealer and put it to him that the Buick dealer has matched the price on the Pontiac. Did he want to lower his price to win the deal. It would also give me time to call the Credit Union in Richardson, Texas to ask them if the price we’d been quoted was the best we could expect to get. The credit union agent who answered the phone assured me the quote was about right for the Pontiac and Buick but thought the dealer could come down some more if he wanted to make the deal. I got approval for the car loan over the phone and he gave me a phone number to give to the car dealer if I decided to make the purchase. On returning to the Pontiac dealer just before noon on Monday, IM and I found the salesman we had been dealing with on Sunday and explained that we had the same offer from Nance Buick for a similar equipped station wagon. Would he better his offer to win the business? Back to the salesman’s office for another mandatory wait while the sales manager and salesman used more psychology on us. After a shorter delay than the day before—or perhaps we had reconciled ourselves to a longer delay—the salesman returned with an offer that was lower by a couple $100. Not what we had wanted but better than we had expected to pay.

Thus, we became owners of our second car. I felt bad leaving the Buick behind as we drove away in the new station wagon. It had served us well, carrying IM and me into married life—2600 miles the day after we drove it off the lot on July 13th 1967. The Buick carried IM to the Prince George’s Hospital in Cheverly, Maryland to give birth to our first born ME on February 14th 1968 and it had brought the two of them back to our apartment in Landover, Maryland. In the time between, it had carried me daily during the week between Landover, Greenbelt, and Bethesda and on the weekend had ferried the three of us all over Washington DC and its suburbs, and on several occasions to Long Island and back to visit IM’s friends. And a few months over a year after first hauling us to Maryland, the Buick carried the three of us another 1400 miles through Virginia, the length of Tennessee, and across Arkansas to Dallas. Thereafter, it had carried us numerous times back and forth the 1300 miles roundtrip between Dallas and El Paso. In all these many miles it had carried us in air-conditioned comfort and never once letting us down. How can you not feel some emotion for such a dependable machine?

September 8, 2005 – Summer Reading “Shadow of the Wind”

September 8, 2005 – Summer Reading “Shadow of the Wind”

I finished a good book this summer entitled “Shadow of the Wind,” by Carlos Ruiz Zafon, a novelist born in Barcelona in 1964 whose novel begins in the Barcelona of 1945. The main character, 10-year old Daniel Sempere, born a few years before the start of the Spanish Civil War (1936 to 1939) is on his way with his father to the Cemetery of Forgotten Books, the repose of books that have gone wanting for readers. Daniel’s father, a bookstore owner, tells his son never to mention the secret place to anyone. Once there, the senior Sempere introduces his son to Isaac, the owner, and tells his son to find one book that he would like to have as his own. Through the labyrinthine maze of bookshelves the boy wanders until a book catches his eye and he knows that he must possess it. The book is entitled “The Shadow of the Wind,” by Julian Carax; a Spaniard who published most of his works in Paris, though the works were later published in Spain by a Barcelona publisher named Toni Cabestani.

The story goes on to involve a friend of the older Sempere, Gustavo Barcelo, another far wealthier bookseller, who offers to buy the book from the younger Sempere. It seems there are no copies of any Carax novel to be had anywhere in Barcelona, making this work prized. When Daniel refuses to sell the work, Barcelo befriends the young man and introduces him to his blind daughter Clara nearly twice Daniel’s age. She has read several of Carax’s novels except “Shadow of the Wind,” which Daniel offers to read to her. The two become friends and Daniel begins to wonder why Carax’s novels are nowhere to be found. His curiosity is aroused all the more when he’s visited by a man with a disfigured face claiming to be Lian Coubert, a character from Carax’s novel “Shadow of the Wind”. He too wants the Carax novel but his intention is to burn the work as he has done with all the other copies he’s been able to locate. Frightened, the young Sempere returns the book to Isaac for safekeeping.

At about the same time, the younger Sempere, now 16 years old, befriends a street person with the unlikely name of Fermin Romero de Torres, an ex-soldier with a past that has exiled him to the streets of Barcelona. The senior Sempere needs help in the bookstore and Fermin Romero de Torres fits the bill. Once cleaned up and taken first into the Sempere home above the bookstore then installed in a Pension nearby. Fermin Romero de Torres, with his prominent nose, and lanky physique, is a long winded, pompous but loveable rogue who becomes an asset to the store with his knowledge of books and his ability to acquire books store patrons want but not available in the store. This second ability is what helps the younger Sempere satisfy his curiosity about the mysterious author Julian Carax.

Fermin Romero de Torres bears more than a slight resemblance to Sancho Panza, as in his childhood innocence does Daniel Sempere resemble his master Don Quixote. And as in Cervantes’ tale of a quest, Zafon too has set his pair upon a journey of discovery meeting all manner of strange and compelling characters along the way. Zafon’s story is a coming of age tale that describes the hardships, both self-inflicted and real that every young person endures as they grow into adulthood. In Zafon’s account, drawn with sympathetic clarity, the reader sees the lives of two young men, Daniel Sempere and Julian Carax, With the discovery of the lost novel, the young Sempere unwittingly sets a sequence of events in motion that he cannot undo. In his pursuit to learn of Julian Carax, the reader watches Julian grow from a boy much like Sempere into a talented but tormented young man.

To learn who Carax really is, Carlos Ruiz Zafon takes the reader on a journey with young Daniel Sempere and the verbose Fermin Romero de Torres as the reader’s guides. We learn of the Aldaya family and their great house named The Angel of Mist at 32 Avenida del Tibidabo: the patriarch, a ruthless businessman named Don Ricardo Aldaya, his son Jorge and daughter Penelope and her governess Jacinto Coronado—bound to her young charge with near obsessive devotion. This wealthy family is connected to the family of Julian Carax, his mother Sophie Carax, a French governess married to his father Antonin Fortuny, the hat maker—Julian chose to use his mother’s name. The connection results from Don Ricardo Aldaya happening into the hat maker’s store and being taken with Julian. At his expense, the businessman enrolls the young boy, who shares Aldaya’s love of books, into San Gabriel the private school his son Jorge attends.

At San Gabriel the reader meets the other major characters of this tale of ultimate destruction and final redemption: Francisco Javier Fumero, the school caretaker’s son and his society aspiring mother Maria (AKA, Yvonne) and Francisco Ramos, the cook’s son—both boys of poor means outcasts among their wealthier schoolmates. The former will become the great villain of this Passion play. Another major character among the boys at San Gabriel’s is Miquel Moliner. He is the son of a wealthy arms manufacturer and a German mother who died three years before young Miquel entered San Gabriel’s, leaving the boy obsessed with death. He develops a deep abiding friendship to Julian. These four became close in school, though Francisco Javier Fumero was the most distant and aloof of them, ultimately attempting to kill Julian only to be thwarted by the quick action of Miquel. Fumero had learned that Penelope Aldaya, the girl he had become obsessed with, was in love with Julian and he with her.

In later years, Nuria Montfort, the daughter of Isaac, proprietor of the Cemetery of Forgotten Books, would marry Miquel. Like her husband, she too would become obsessed with Julian. It was she who secreted Carax’s books in her father’s hiding place away from the destructive clutch of Lian Coubert. Daniel would come to know all these characters as he visited them en route to his final discovery.

With his skills as a cold -blooded killer, Fumero the reader, learns and prospers during the Spanish Civil War becoming an agent first for the Republicans and then for the Nationalist. He excels at torture, intimidation and murder—both sanctioned and otherwise. Like the young Daniel Sempere, he too, is looking for the illusive Julian Carax. The reader also learns that Fermin Romero de Torres is no stranger to the sadistic but well known Chief Inspector of Police, Fumero. In fact, the reader learns that de Torres battered body bears the scars of Fumero’s handy work. During the novel, the Chief Inspector toys with both de Torres and the young Sempere as he uses them to find the foremost object of his destructive desire, Carax.

In the course of Zafon’s work, he introduces us to a number of memorable well-drawn ancillary characters. There is the gay watchmaker, Federico Flavia, who enjoys dressing in drag and performing at a local bar. There is Tomas Aguilar, Daniel’s best friend and Tomas’s sister Beatriz. There are the other characters that populate the pages because of their earlier contributions to places in the story. The house on Avenida del Tibidabo was built by a wealthy Catalan Financier Salvador Jauza, who moved in with his wife, a Philadelphia socialite and his mistress a mulatto maid named Marisela, a mysterious ebony beauty who turned heads in the streets of Barcelona. In addition, there is the character Baltasar Deulofeu I Carallot, AKA Laszlo de Vicherny, professional gigolo and con artist. In the mid 19th century, he converted a run down old building into his own place of extreme debauchery called The Tenebrarium, which Zafon take pains to describe in detail. Its mention results from it becoming at the time of the novel the Santa Lucia hospice, where Daniel and Fermin find Jacinto Coronado and learn what she knows of Penelope and Julian.

Zafon’s work made the New York Times Bestseller list and with good reason. It holds its reader right up to the end and rewards his/her patience with a cathartic ending that brings the tale to a satisfying conclusion. It’s an enjoyable work to read.

September 7, 2005 - A Labor Day Weekend Adventure

September 7, 2005 - A Labor Day Weekend Adventure

Early Saturday morning—an overcast sky at 8:00 AM giving way to a late sunrise an hour later—my wife IM and I pack up her car and drive onto Highway 101 southbound at just before 10:00 AM. We are among the millions hitting the highway this Labor Day Weekend bound for some place other than where we are. In our case, our destination is Irvine, California where we plan to celebrate our daughter RD’s thirty something birthday and have a housewarming for the new place she and the family have just moved into. Southbound 101 is moving at a good pace and not with the heavy traffic we had expected to encounter. Gas being over $3 a gallon thanks to Hurricane Katrina or so they say, some among us might have chosen to stay home and have a neighborhood barbecue.

We exit Highway 101 at Highway 152 eastbound and stop just after we cross over 101 at a recently built shopping mall on the right hand side of 152 just east of the 101 interchange. There’s a new Mimi’s Restaurant in the center and we stop for breakfast. Arriving just after 10:00 AM we have no trouble getting a table. For those unfamiliar with Mimi’s, it’s a restaurant chain—we first encountered the chain in Orange County years back—with a country French ambiance: brick exterior with a patio seating area and booths around the walls and tables within the two to three dining areas inside. The walls are decorated with late 19th and turn of the 20th century posters of French artwork: Can Can dancers and the like. And the waitresses are attired in white blouse and skirt that suggest a French period that I would be hard pressed to identify.

As we place our order we hear sirens blaring on Highway 152 and turn to see CHP cruisers and fire trucks heading east on 152. “Pacheco Pass,” the waitress says, “it’s usually an accident on Pacheco Pass Road that gets the fire and CHP rolling.” I get concern thinking we’ll be tied up for hours as the emergency teams attend to a road-closing accident. There was nothing we could do however but press on as our only other alternative was to drive down 101 to Highway 46 at Paso Robles—think convoys of RVs as far as the eye can see on a two-lane blacktop between Paso Robles and Interstate 5 some seventy miles or so east. We chose the devil we knew over the devil we didn’t.

Highway 152 is a hazardous,1930s-1940s vintage road: two lanes of twisting macadam snaking from Gilroy, California all the way to Interstate 5, some 40 miles east. Right after 101, the highway passes the large Gilroy Garlic processing facility on the right, then over Llagos Creek, next curving left though a corridor of flat farmland for a mile of so then bending right passing more farms on either side of the road. After several miles, the flat terrain begins to give way to hills on the left side of the road, a stretch of neatly trellised vineyard, belonging to Mistral Vineyards on the left, a dairy farm missing its dairy herd on the right, the Cathy Grimes horse stable further along on the right. At the start of a holiday weekend, we’re curving and bending left and right continually along this stretch with 18-wheelers coming toward us at 50 MPH or more and a string of traffic in front or behind us. This morning, however, the amount of traffic is remarkably lighter than usual

The two-lane blacktop nears an end as we approach a steep incline where highway 152 races over a steep grade toward its rendezvous with Highway 156 at the bottom of the incline. We are completely surprised that we haven’t seen any sign of an accident or emergency activity. The waitress had been wrong. At the bottom of the grade, the road curves left and becomes a divided four-lane highway full of twists and turns as it runs toward its dizzying climb over Pacheco Pass. Two or three miles after Highway 152 widens, it passes Casa de Fruta, the fruit stand that has morphed into a destination spot along 152. It hosts the Renaissance Pleasure Faire in the Fall and offers a large RV park, gas station, restaurant and other amusements for vacationing families. Beyond Casa de Fruta, 152 picks up speed, as travelers hurry on their way to Interstate 5.

The amount of traffic approaching the grade is relatively sparse for a Labor Day Weekend Saturday as we begin our ascent to the top of Pacheco Pass. Caltrans has built concrete dividers between the eastbound and westbound lanes to prevent cars from crossing the short medium that previously separated the fast moving traffic. Before the concrete barriers, heavily traveled weekends would find someone driving across the medium and taking themselves and an unsuspecting oncoming traveler into eternity. We crest the pass and begin the roller coaster descent past the massive earthen O'Neill Dam holding back the waters of San Luis Reservoir, speeding past O'Neill Forebay—a huge bulge in the California Aqueduct, past Highway 33 and the truck stop at Santa Nella. About a mile or two down the road from the truck stop, we finally reach the onramp to Interstate 5—the California Aqueduct has likewise left the forebay, slid under I-5, and begins to follow us in our southward sojourn.

Interstate 5 is the high-speed, north-south corridor between the top and bottom of the state. Four hours at 70 MPH will bring us into LA, but the traffic along the road is easily doing 80 to 85 MPH, at times bursting to 90 or above along intermittent stretches of open road. The traffic clusters around unintentional convoys of 18-wheelers and slower moving RVs with a long line in the fast lane trying to pass the slower moving behemoths in the right and impatient drivers racing along on the right jumping the line of passing cars, SUVs, and minivans closer to the bottleneck.

Thirty miles south after getting on I-5 we stop at the Panoche Road exit and gas up with enough fuel to get us through LA and into Irvine without another stop—$3.39 a gallon! Thus, we avoid the rest stops further south that are continuously jammed with travelers making a pit stop, eating, or refueling as the day progresses. Back on the freeway, we notice a Sigalert on an electronic sign warning of a fire at Tejon Pass on the Grapevine with CHP escorting traffic over the summit. The Grapevine is so named because of grapevines found on early trails over the mountain. We quicken our passed concerned that in the two hours it will take us to get to the Grapevine, the CHP will have closed the road meaning a possible overnight in a motel at the bottom of the incline or a long wait in a long line of traffic in 100-degree F heat of the San Joaquin Valley floor.

As we near the base of the Grapevine, I-5 races toward its junction with Highway 99, the other north-south highway connecting the two extremes of the state. At the confluence, the road becomes as wide as six lanes in spots, eventually narrowing to four lanes where the road begins to ascend the grapevine—the right-most lane, dedicated to slow moving vehicles. There is nothing to suggest that the warning about a fire over the Tejon Pass might possibly have closed the road, except an ominous cloud of smoke that we see looming over the mountain range as we begin the ascent. Our concern is that smoke from the blaze—common this time of year in the Angeles National Forest though which I-5 runs—had become so dense that driving becomes too hazardous. We would simply get into lne and wait for the CHP escort once we neared the smoke affected area of the road.

The ascent up the grapevine is a long stretch of twisting road taxing every engine that mounts an assault. If there is an undetected problem in an older model car, this stretch of road will find it. Since our car is relatively new, just two years old, we ignore the warning to shut off the air conditioner before climbing the grade. And instead of nursing the car at 50 MPH, I’ve put the accelerator to the floor managing to reach 70 MPH or more on open stretches of uphill highway. As we reach the crest of the steep grade, we pass the Old Fort Tejon State Park and the CHP station on the left and begin a more gradual climb toward Lebec and Frazier Mountain Park Road at the summit of El Tejon Pass. I-5 from the CHP station is a stretch about five miles long of straight open road. At the end of the straightaway, begins a slow curve to the right as it heads toward the peak.

As we come around the gradual right curve—the Flying J Ranch across the highway on our left side, we are confronted with an horizon of smoke, darkening the sky on either side of the I-5. It reminds me of angry clouds that spawn tornados—lots of churning and swirling within the mass of gray-black darkness. As we race toward the curtain of ominous dark cloud hugging the ground, we have the impression of going into a tunnel. Nearing the Frazier Mountain Park Road exit on I-5, the traffic all begins to move into the two left lanes leaving the two right lanes completely open. I floor the accelerator passing cars on my left as the speedometer registered 75 and 80 MPH. As we approached the exit, we realized why all the cars had begun to merge left. Flames from the fire are leaping up the sides from the underpass of the highway licking maliciously at everything within reach. I began to move left into the third lane from the right and as we pass the exit, we can feel the flames’ heat permeating the passenger side of the car. The tunnel of smoke lasts no more than a quarter of mile along the left curving length of southbound I-5. Thereafter, the sun reappears and the road is completely open with only a sparse stream of fast moving traffic.

On the other side of the highway, the conditions are not as good: five lanes of slow-and-go traffic with a CHP pickup escorting the pack toward the inferno we had just traversed, the fire much more ominous on the northbound side as the flames rage for a longer stretch of the highway. The CHP would have been better advised to close down the two right-most lanes to keep cars away from harm. As we crest the left curving rise in I-5 a mile or so up the road beyond Frazier Peak, we see more smoke pouring onto the roadway from the right side as another part of the wildfire licks away at the dried fuel along the highway. Though there is smoke billowing up from the blaze, flames have not yet threatened the thinned stream of southbound traffic. However as we draw close to the smoke, we notice in the right most lanes closest to the flames not one but two large gasoline tanker trucks. I keep the accelerator floored—the car now traveling at nearly 75 MPH—and moved into the leftmost lane farthest from the fuel trucks.

As we reach the summit and begin the descent toward the Gorman exit on I-5, we put the fire further in our rearview mirror. On the northbound side of I-5, the traffic is slowed to a crawl across all four lanes waiting for CHP escorts to take clumps past the maelstrom. The ominous sirens we had heard at the start of our journey had foretold an emergency elsewhere. And I had reason to be concerned as we learned in radio news reports we heard an hour later as we reached the northern suburbs of Los Angeles—“I-5 over the Grapevine had been closed in both directions due to wildfires raging on either side of the highway.”

September 1, 2005 – What It’s Like to Regain One’s Mobility

September 1, 2005 – What It’s Like to Regain One’s Mobility

I called my Dad today during lunch hour to see how he was doing. He’s been recuperating from a broken leg after taking a fall in the parking lot of William Beaumont General Hospital which is at the top of Pierce Avenue in El Paso, Texas, where Pierce dead ends into Alabama Street. That was in mid May. This many months later he is finally up on his feet walking with a cane inside the house and with a walker outside. I’m making the call on my cell phone during a walk along the bike path that runs along Highway 101 between San Antonio Road and Embarcadero Road in Palo Alto, California, where I work. My father is hard of hearing and I end up yelling at the top of my voice into the mouthpiece of my cell phone to be heard. I don’t often say much as my father is fond of talking and I set him off by yelling a short question and then turn on the speakerphone feature of my cell phone and listen to my dad’s lengthy response. I don’t mind, as I like the sound of his voice, which still has clear signs of his Mississippi accent. My wife IM has as much of a time trying to understand him as I had trying to comprehend her father’s Glasgow accent. We often wondered what it would have been like for the two of them hold a conversation. Both speaking English but neither one with any idea of what the other was saying.

My father gets his gift of the gab from his being born and raised in Mississippi, which has a rich tradition of story telling, especially among the women folk. Dad was raised by his grandmother and mother with little male supervision—though he had plenty of maternal supervision—until he left home in his mid teens. I asked if he was able to drive and he regaled me with his experience driving the small red Pontiac Grand Am he had bought a couple of years back. The smaller car was to provide a more reliable means of transportation when he had his first hip replacement surgery and save gas. His other ride is an early 1970s Ford pickup truck that has no smog control and burns regular gas and plenty of it. His other ride is a 1970s Ford Econoline Van, which doesn’t work, and he’s in no condition to fix it. The ride he really wants is his VW bus with a tacky 1970s carpet covering the center of the van floor, which the sliding side door exposes when opened. At the back of the van is one rear bench seat over the engine compartment that seats two people. In the front are two bucket seats, both high off the ground providing both a good view of the road ahead and you have to step up to get into the driver’s seat, something that would have eased the whole driving process for my dad after his hip replacement. With his good left leg, he would lift his less flexible healing right leg into the driver’s compartment, without all the bending and butt-first entry the Grand Am requires.


The van has good memories for me. Before my wife IM and I were married, we would pile into the van with my three sisters one or more with date in tow and have a night out usually in Juarez. The first time we made the trip across the border, sometime in the spring of 1967, IM had just come over from Australia and we had gone to Juarez without her passport. Back then Americans regularly went back and forth without the formality of papers. On the return trip you would report that you had nothing to declare and then state your nationality “American” pronounced “Ah Mir eh Kin” or worse if you had been drinking. As we neared the border, my sisters were attempting to get IM to say the word the way the border guard expected it to said not with the Scottish accent she was pronouncing it with. IM is a proper Brit in that she believes in obeying all the rules especially where the authorities are concerned.) You have to picture a van full of dark skinned people; my sisters and I have a brown complexion with facial features that could be mistaken for those of an Hispanic. The one lone exception is my lovely wife IM with the blond hair and light complexion of a Scot—the one person in the van that looks American, can’t pronounce the word and a van full of others who look Hispanic and can. We made it through, though the border guard could have held us all up if he had been in the mood.

The van that my father pined for was at my brother’s place and had been there for months. My father had told my brother he planned to install power steering in the van but my brother said he knew where he could put his hands on a power steering unit that would fit the van and he would have it installed in no time. The van is still sitting in my brother’s lot—he owns a short haul trucking company and a hydraulics repair business, waiting for my brother or one of the mechanics working for him to get to it. To be fair, my brother works easily 12 hours a day and at least one day on the weekend if not both. His wife sees him because she helps him run the trucking company. My brother inherited my father’s mechanical aptitude and both love working with their hands. One day I’ll be visiting him and the van will be back home with my dad in its parking place power steering enabled.

Hence, my dad is driving the Pontiac Grand AM. Every trip is an adventure especially when my mom is in tow. Dad described the process of getting him and my mother to church last Saturday evening. They attend Mass at Our Lady of the Assumption the evening before to escape the crowd and as their night out together. Once mom is safely buckled in to her seat, dad in his walker makes the journey to the end of the driveway to open the gate. Their dog Sasha has long learned not to leave the yard even when the gates are opened and has never violated the rule. Once the gates are opened dad returns to the car, folds his walker which he slides into the back seat, then opens the driver side door, sits in the driver’s seat, pulls his right leg in (the good leg with the knee and hip replacement now healed). Then, with the driver’s seat back in the full recline position, leans back and drags his left leg into the car. Readjusting the seat back to its upright position, he settles himself in, starts the engine and backs out of the driveway. He parks on the street, exits the car reversing the procedure he used getting himself in, retrieves his walker, walks to the two haves of the inwardly opening gate and brings them to center where he latches them shut. Back into the car for the five or six blocks drive to the church and in the parking lot where the process of exiting the car is repeated.

After his story of his trip to and from church, he mentioned that he had begun to make other trips most without my mother, to the grocery store and to run errands. I got the impression he was getting his mobility back and that was ridding him of the frustration he had experienced being unable to move about at will. He turns 85 this year and he wants to spend as much time as he has left enjoying the world around him.