GARGOZO MANUSCRIPT

In the late 1960s, I flew round trip to San Francisco every week day.  I took the first PSA morning flight from Burbank to San Francisco and flew back in the late afternoon.  Every day I enjoyed a fully-paid, 5-hour layover in North Beach.  There was a pickup truck waiting for me when I landed at San Francisco that I would use to make my morning delivery to a downtown bank and proceed to the company yard a block away from Fisherman's Wharf.  Fred Cook ran the yard and supervised about 40 delivery drivers.  Fred was a big burly guy who could be pretty intimidating.  His claim to fame was having driven an 18 wheeler full of cattle to safety through the worst blizzard in Montana's history.  On my first day as a courier, Fred was waiting for me when I got off the plane.  He showed me where the pickup was and the route I would drive everyday to the bank, through China Town and ending at the yard. With Fred at the wheel, th...

The hole in the center of Munson's living room ceiling had grown larger every year.  What began as a small water stain had become a gaping overhead chasm bigger than the sofa bed that sat below it.  I regularly went to visit Munson every 4 or 5 months and had observed the gradual change for more than 20 years.  Munson was known to procrastinate well beyond the normal limits but even he was beginning to acknowledge that something had to be done about the ceiling.  For Munson, the novelty had worn off of watching people walk into his living room, come to an abrupt halt, throw their heads back and stare upward for a full minute as though they had entered Carlsbad Caverns. Doug was living in the house when he met Munson at a 49ers game.  They became good friends and together went to many games, sports bars, casinos and race tracks.  Doug liked the idea of collecting rent for the 2 nd bedroom and they became roommates in the mid 1980s....

Once Carey, Walter and I were done with school, it dawned on us that we were among the "have nots"; and none of us knew how to deal with it.  In the late 1960s, we wasted several years in a series of desperate attempts to avoid growing up.  When any of us were working, it was strictly out of necessity and never a job that we valued.  None of us could come to grips with the harsh prospect of getting on with our lives.  The three of us made for the worst possible chemistry.  Rather than be alarmed by the lengths to which one of us would go to delay the inevitable, the other two would be inspired by the display of commitment. Walter worked with Carey at Sparklettes for a while and hated every minute of it.  He set records for absenteeism and the range of excuses was extraordinary.  Nothing was off the table including most non-terminal illnesses, family emergencies, dental appointments, in-law funerals, court appearances, car trouble, b...

It was my misfortune to win the first time I went to the track.  On a Sunday in the summer of 1967, Munson took me out for closing day at Hollywood Park and we both came away with what seemed like a lot of money at the time.  I had stayed up until the wee hours the night before being tutored by Munson on the finer points of thoroughbred handicapping.  Munson had grown up 10 minutes from Santa Anita Race Track and had become a complete fanatic.  My biggest score had come at the end of the day when I put everything I had on a grey horse named Win For Me Only . As thrilled as I was to have won the money, I was even more enthused by how easy it had been to pick winners.  I began pressing Munson as soon as we started walking out the exit back to our car.  Why hadn't he told me about this before?  Why were we working when we could be doing this every day?  He mentioned that some days were better than others but he failed to give this ...