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 ...

Yesterday I walked on the abandoned soap box derby track that I rode down 58 years ago.  The course is located in Ernest Debs Park, and sits on a hill above the Arroyo Seco, a stone's throw from the Pasadena Freeway.  It seems unlikely that this barren knoll was where thousands of spectators once came every summer to watch kids trying to qualify for the Nationals.  The winner of the western competition moved on to the U. S. National Championships held in Akron, Ohio.  There is nothing that remains of the grandstands that were once set against the Montecito Heights hillside but some of the racing surface is still in place.  The soap box derby took place at the end of the summer and competitors were aged 11 to 15.  The cars were powered by gravity alone and moved their way down a straight sloped track when released from the starting line.  The various local courses across the USA were all different in length and slope.  Some cou...

Lion Country Safari had plenty of bad press but the incident with Carey and the lions was never made public.  The place opened in 1970 in Irvine with its 140 acres snug up against the side of the 405 freeway.  Visitors paid an entrance fee to drive their own cars on a 4 mile road that wound through a collection of animals that all appeared to roam free.  The lions and the creatures they normally feasted on were separated by barriers that were positioned in gullies and thus unseen from the road.  You moved along at your own rate and could stop as often and for as long as you wanted.  You were instructed to keep all doors and windows closed at all times. Unlike in the wild, all of these animals were well fed by the caretakers.  As for the lions, with no need to hunt down prey, the big cats slept all day in the hot weather and rarely even lifted their heads when cars drove up and stopped.  Carey liked the idea of checking out lions cl...

I need to set the record straight.  None of the internet comments from customers and former owners about the burger joint on Eagle Rock Boulevard have the complete story.  The internet accounts identify correctly the progression of the recent names for the place from "The Bucket", to "Dee Dee's Dive" and as of today, "Patio Burgers and Beer."  What's missing from this is that prior to 1965 the place was called "Don's Bucket." Don was a former owner who was long gone by the time I first went there in the 1950's with my dad.  The place was then owned and run by a scruffy old Greek named Nick who took your order, cooked your food and collected your money.  The current fenced-in area with the covered patio, table, chairs and TV all came 30 years later.  The original Don's Bucket was strictly a dumpy little stub of a building, painted shit brown, and shaped like a giant thimble with rounded corners and...

During the latter part of the 1960s, Carey owned Mt. Washington.  Each weekday he visited people's homes on every street on the hill for conversation, a cup of coffee or to play with the family dog.  Carey drove a route for Sparklettes when the 5-gallon, 40-pound bottles were still made of glass.  He drove one of those ugly green company trucks up and down the impractical network of steep, narrow and winding lanes that cover the mountain.  At every stop, he took 2 bottles off the truck and carted them into customer's homes.  He grasped each bottle by the neck, holding the first down by his side and the second perched on his shoulder.  Carey was the only Sparklettes' employee to regularly carry more than one full bottle at a time.  In addition, company policy forbade resting a bottle on your shoulder lest the glass shatter and decapitate the driver.  Mt. Washington has very little level ground.  From the street to the fr...

My dad's parents came from Italy in 1910 and before long settled down to raise a family at the foot of Mt. Washington in Southern California.  Their first house still sits on the corner of Maceo and Aragon in an area known as Cypress Park.  The house is a cheap version of the craftsman style but looks to be in decent shape given its age. Cypress Park is in the Elysian Valley and on the north bank of the Los Angeles River at the base of Mt. Washington.  It was first settled by a Shoshone tribe.  In 1769, Gaspar de Portola led the first European exploration of the area and described the area as a "very lush green valley".  The land was later subdivided and established as a community in 1882.  Jim Jeffries who became the World Heavyweight Champion in 1899, grew up in a house in Cypress Park where Florence Nightingale Middle School is now located. East of Cypress Park is Boyle Heights where Alfonzo Cordoba, my mother's Basque fat...