GARGOZO MANUSCRIPT

Lodging accommodations for the Munson Road Tests I & II; 855 square feet above a one-car garage Munson and I waited nervously in the front bedroom while bedlam raged on downstairs.   Munson was lying on the bed and I was on a cot.   We’d both chosen to keep our clothes and shoes on, figuring it would be more practical when the police arrived.   The two dozen lunatics holed up in Munson’s garage had been going at it for a couple of hours and it was now past three in the morning.   This was the first night of an event that had been labeled the "Munson Road Test".   The participants were made up of mostly thirtysomethings who rode bicycles together at night in Los Angeles and who had descended on Munson’s place in San Francisco for a long weekend.   The first road test had been held the previous year in 2009 but nothing like this had taken place. This year the seven-hour drive crammed into various cars coupled with a sudden massive influx of alc...

The collector from Texas had flown to LAX and rented a car to haul the guns 1,557 miles back to Houston .  He picked out a Toyota Camry for both its gas mileage and large trunk space but neglected to mention to the person at the Hertz counter that he would be transporting nearly a hundred rifles and pistols across state lines.  When he pulled up at Jean’s place in Culver City , it took him only two hours to inspect the guns, pay Jean and load up the Camry before starting out on his 22-hour drive home.  Two days before the collector arrived Jean and I had laid out the guns on tables in her dining and living rooms.   I particularly enjoyed the juxtaposition of the table strewn with rifles that sat beneath the Barbara Streisand painting.  It fit so well with the alternate universe that Jean inhabits.  There are life-sized metal sculptures of a man, a girl and a pig that have been in Jean’s living room for many years.  When the gentleman from Texas...

No sane person would take a red-eye flight but it was January and I was headed to Minnesota.  I planned to board the plane at LAX around midnight, catch a bit of sleep during the 4-hour flight and show up at the client, Select Comfort, before 8:00 a.m. their time. Granted it was a brutal way to travel but it eliminated at least a half day being exposed to  Minnesota weather.   I looked for ways to cut short any trip to the twin cites since my first visit five years earlier when the client was an iron ore mine near Duluth on the shores of Lake Superior.  It was mid-April and the day I arrived was the first time in over 100 consecutive days that the temperature in Duluth would reach above freezing. I pulled into the company parking lot after driving three hours due north from Minneapolis, got out of the rental car and was immediately bitten on the neck by the first mosquito of the season.  A year in Minnesota consists of an 8-month winter, wor...

I drove over to Jean’s house to help her gather up all of the guns John had spent decades collecting.  I walked inside and saw that she had already put out more than twenty rifles, pistols and gun cases on the furniture in the living room.  The vast majority of the collection was made up of airguns and this had caught the attention of a collector in Texas who specialized in this niche.  Jean was going to have to build a catalogue of sorts before any negotiating took place so she asked Larry, an old friend and air gun aficionado, to help her sort through the arsenal and determine its value. Jean took me into the back bedroom where most of the guns were stored including forty rifles leaning up against one wall, eight in the closet and a half dozen in cases strewn about the room.  We found a dozen rifles in a cupboard in the hallway, another ten rifles on top of a dresser in another bedroom and lots more in the garage.  We wanted the guns to be easy for La...

Needing to kill an hour the other day, I wandered into the Eagle Rock Plaza for the first time in twenty five years and was transported to downtown Manila .  The term “Plaza” having been obviously drawn from the large public squares typically adjacent to a cathedral and common to Central and South American cities as well as throughout Europe .  Many of these traditional plazas are vast in size and all are spaces open to the heavens above as opposed to the Eagle Rock Plaza which is completely enclosed and can be entered only from the north side.   The City of Manila has eight major plazas, five of which are referred to as “freedom parks” where no permits are required for demonstrations and protests.  Perhaps the name “Plaza” had something to do with the Eagle Rock Plaza evolving over the years into a place where all things Filipino abound including merchants, customers, merchandise, food, stores and even the muzak. The Plaza opened in Octo...

(see January of 2015 for part I) In 1964 toward the end of my sophomore year at Occidental, Dean Culley called me into his office to inform me that my grade point average of 1.2 was nearing a milestone. Benjamin Culley, who despised me, was the Dean of Men and taught a course in statistics.  He made no effort to mask the pleasure he took in telling me that without a miraculous reversal it would soon be statistically impossible to raise my GPA to the 2.0 required to graduate.  He added that when I reached this point of no return the college would be obligated to drop me as a student.  To avoid losing my student deferment and relocating to either Canada or Viet Nam , I began a process of elimination lasting a few months and ending with me listed as an art major. The college's records in those days were mainly printed forms filled out by administrative personnel.  My transcript displayed five handwritten entries in the field labeled “Major”, with a line drawn t...

Another January and there I was,  once again queued up on the  sidewalk in front of  Aldama  Elementary, vying for a kindergarten spot for my grandson.  A year ago I arrived 19 hours prior to registration, this year it was 22 hours but I split the time with my son Michael.  As difficult as it may be to describe the set of circumstances that could bring anyone to do such a thing once, let alone twice, I’m going to take a crack at it nonetheless. Over several decades the combined efforts of the LAUSD and the UTLA have driven the parents of hundreds of thousands of kids to desperation.  Parents have turned their backs on a free but inferior public school in their own neighborhood to find an alternative that offers some hope for their children’s education.  The rush to secure a spot at a private, charter or out-of-area school, has parents participating in lotteries, camping out prior to registration, and if successful, possibly adding up to 10 ...