GARGOZO MANUSCRIPT

The drive to LAX to catch a flight to Munson's would give me just enough time to play the daily double at Hollywood Park.  In the 1960s the best route from my place on Mt. Washington to the "track of lakes and flowers" was to drive west on the Santa Monica Freeway and then south on La Brea.  Decades later a better option was created when they opened the 105 or Century Freeway.  At least it was better until 2013 when they did away with Hollywood Park.  The "daily double" used to be a wager that applied strictly to the first two races on the card.  You had to place your wager prior to the start of the first race and your single ticket had to include the winners of both races to collect.  Picking lots of horses in both races obviously increased the chances that you'd win but doing so could make the ticket cost more than the payoff.  Although you were less apt to win, the best return came from picking only one horse in each race....

TROUT HAVEN GAZETTE   Fish Feeds Multitude by Teresa Owen-Cooper & Marcus Montoya Redding, California July 25, 2009 – Local church elders held interviews long into the night to verify reports that Elizabeth Herndon, a resident of Los Angeles, had managed to feed hundreds of anglers with Jason Hadley's prize winning catch at the annual Trout Haven Nude Fishing Tournament. When contacted by phone Elizabeth explained, "I started making lunch for me and Jason and I could tell there would be a little extra.  After I invited some of the other contestants to join us I could see a line starting to form, so I resorted to a few special techniques using a roux, some stuffing and other gimmicks. " Originally from Northern California, Elizabeth went on to state that learning how to stretch a meal did not come to her through traditional means.  "It was the years I spent working as Helen Keller's personal chef that really made it possible,...

"Fiction is dead, reality has strangled invention." Red Smith, New York Herald Tribune (October 4, 1951), written the day the New York Giants' Bobby Thompson hit a walk-off homer to take the National League Championship away from the Brooklyn Dodgers.   The 1960s and early 1970s saw a seemingly endless string of mind-boggling events take place.  All of which were made even more incomprehensible as they came on the heels of the repressed and sterilized 1950s.  If a novel had presented the same series of situations as its plot line it would be considered too farfetched to deserve any reader's attention.    Thirteen years of madness began with JFK's January 1961 inauguration speech when he asked the country to help him "fight war itself" and then promptly increased the American Military "advisors" in Vietnam from a few hundred to 16,000.    Then in November of 1963 when JFK was killed no one thought anything ...