GARGOZO MANUSCRIPT

On a Monday night in September of 2002, I was driving behind Munson on Culver Blvd going toward the ocean, looking for a place to stop for beer and food.  He had flown in to LAX in the late afternoon and I had driven to the airport rental car agency to meet him.   Munson worked at the regional headquarters for the U.S. Post Office in San Francisco but had begun a 10 week assignment as the interim Director of Human Resources in Inglewood, California.  We had no specific place in mind.  We had simply taken Manchester Blvd and headed to the beach.  Going west on Manchester, once you cross Pacific Coast Highway you enter Playa Del Rey.  The town has only 12,000 residents and is surrounded by LAX, the Ballona Creek Ecological Reserve, and the Pacific Ocean.  Ballona Creek was the original mouth of the Los Angeles River until it was shifted to San Pedro.  Playa Del Rey has virtually undergone no change whatsoever since the 19...

The motivation I had for staying in graduate school came from conversations with friends, and obituaries in the Occidental alumni magazine.  This was how I discovered which of the kids I had gone to high school and college with had died in Viet Nam.  I'd never liked school and had gone to way too much of it for my taste.  However, every few weeks I would hear of another casualty, so I kept at it.  As long as I continued with school, I maintained my student deferment and avoided the draft.  School was obviously by far the lesser of the two evils. The closest and most inexpensive grad school was Cal State Los Angeles.  At Oxy I was used to 8-15 outspoken, smart-ass kids in a classroom.  At Cal State, the graduate classes were 2-3 times the size and held in the evening so employed adults could attend.  The Cal State students had worked all day, had little desire to engage in discussion, and were eager to go home as soon as possib...

I met Jean and John at a party in 1974.  The day after the party, I called the host and said thanks, it was fun, but I could have done without those two crazy bastards.  Surprisingly, this evolved into a friendship that has brought me some special times.  They both share an affliction that is untreatable.  They are unable to leave the house without keeping an eye out for stuff.  Their mission is to never overlook stuff that is unique, rare, usually old, and somewhere between interesting junk and a valuable collectible.  Often this means returning home with something that can not be identified by any means, including the internet.  Once in a while, it can mean coming home with something truly marvelous.  One day Jean came home from a yard sale with a box.  It was rectangular, about 4 X 9 inches, an inch deep, and made of solid silver.  It had a lid that fit on top and was obviously a one-of-a kind, hand-crafted ci...

My dad attended Lincoln High School at the same time as Kenny Washington.  Kenny Washington went on to play at UCLA with Woody Strode and Jackie Robinson, and became the first African-American to play in the National Football League.  My dad was a gymnast at Lincoln and most of the other gymnasts on the team were the sons of Russian immigrants.  According to my dad, the Russian kids had exceptional natural strength.  They could do some moves, like an inverted iron cross, that were only done at the Olympic level.  In 1937, Lincoln easily beat the UCLA varsity gymnastics team in a pre-season meet.    My dad was a tumbler and as such didn't have to compete with the strength of the Russians.  Tumbling was the gymnastics pre-cursor to today's "free exercise".  In tumbling, there was no music and you made three passes down a narrow mat 60 feet in length.  He had sliced up his big toe before the league finals, but decided he could still compete if he tap...