Candy and cigarettes
There was something about the light that has changed over the years. I don’t know if it’s all the junk we have loaded and blasted into the air since those days long ago in my childhood, or whether years of a kicked-up cathode ray diet of TV viewing has altered our eyes subtly. But the light, and the air, in early 1950’s California, in my brand-new tract home in Reseda, Southern California, was different. I know I’m not dreaming or imagining things. It was a purer form of light than what meekly shines into our days now, sixty-odd years later. It was warm toned and hued, in a golden luminescence that shimmered visibly off the streets in the summertime and shone loudly through wide bone-ivory Venetian blinds, so bright in golden sun color that the white of the blinds seemed anemic and wan, pale blue undertones like a new baby’s eyes. It was in itself and of itself and seemed to offer a consoling presence when I sought to make sense of the perfection being offered to we 1950s children by our parents. When it streaked into an otherwise darkened room, sparkling like fairy dust, it was almost as if it could speak to me, envelop me in a warmth that offered solace from something unpleasant and as yet known to me, like I could store its sparkle in my inner battery charge for later when skies were gray. That golden light was a backdrop and companion on my adventures through the wilds of suburbia and its borderlands and netherworlds where old overlapped with new and good held evil at bay in an uncertain wrestle that never stopped.
As it ever was, two impossibly young people never thought they would see normalcy again after the horrific events of Worldwide War that plunged their own youth into a darkly surreal vista of the worst of human endeavor. Their youth was stolen, along with friends, family members and acquaintances.
It was culminated in the awful gnashing of civilization’s teeth as the fascist scourge tried to clutch the world by the throat, subdue it and drag it down into the mud and blood and muck of a corporate dictatorship gone mad.
As the victors, those happy shiny young people threw the dice in a giant gamble without knowing what the payoff was, other than its mystical grandness.
I, along with 75 million other bundles of joy, came into life in postwar America, victorious and unlimited, and as a society we were undisputed heavyweight champion of the world. This was 1951. Shortly after that, around 1955, I was a rambling boyo in my neighborhood, along with twenty others. Unthinkable today, moms of the era had no problem letting their 4-year olds loose in the streets. Well, sidewalks mostly. Even then we knew enough to avoid the streets unless we got a game of kickball together. Technically, we were allowed to walk over to our friend’s houses on the same block.
Judging by the photographs and shaky color toned 8-millimeter Bell and Howell home movies, my infancy was indulged and pampered in keeping with the familial style of the day amongst the upper middle classes. We were among a class of people that a scant 50 years previously, barely existed. This was not the impression conveyed to us by the mediums of the day. It seemed like it always had been. All of America was upwardly mobile, working in infinitely growing businesses while the wives stayed behind with the infinitely growing children, running the perfect home. Our grandparents were doting and well mannered, and intent on passing the lessons of upper crust society on to us, the new generation, the culmination of their hopes and aspirations as they climbed the great ladder of American society, their own hopes rooted in the glorious anticipations and gaudy glittering aspects of the Roaring 20s. Even mine and the gestation of millions of my compatriots seems at odds with the carefully cautious and deliberate pregnancies of today; we see 50’s home movies of our moms around the neighborhood drinking martinis out of glass pitchers and smoking Chesterfields, tumescent with the future of America.
Damn, I loved Chesterfields. Old Golds. Raleighs. Cigarettes fascinated me as a small child. When I say “small”, I mean before age five, because the adventures I’m recounting all happened prior to me going away to kindergarten at age 5. I’m fortunate that my memory captures all of this and was not crowded out by more serious concerns. The smell of burning tobacco was inured in my memory as a uniquely adult smell, and I associated it with fun because more often than not fun was being had and someone was lighting up because of their own fun conditioning. My parent’s generation was steeped in the whole tobacco culture. It was a big deal to them, partly because of the advertising targeted at them, the free cigarettes given to soldiers in a combat zone, and the incremental way cigarettes figured into the tango of seduction in that age.
Old Golds, Raleighs, and Chesterfields had these little gold coupons on the back of each pack, and it was for this reason that I loved the things. The coupons were at once tangible, heavy with the cachet of some mysterious tender I knew of but did not traffic in as a small child. Generally, in those days we kids dealt almost exclusively in coinage. It was a halcyon day to be permanently memorialized where you might get a silver dollar, the Grande Coupé de gras, a weighty reward for some rare thing or another. More often the sought-after token was the more practically obtainable 50 cent piece, its heft and diameter conveying a sense of well-being that postwar upwardly mobile and affluent children in new tracts in Reseda took for granted.
I recognized the gold cigarette coupon had some value, but the scale of the thing was lost on all of us. Some of our mothers had shoeboxes full of them, like a secret cache hidden from the world, neatly stacked and rubber banded like little packets of tiny golden moneyed bills. Since they were saved, they had value, we knew this much. I remember that an adult I talked to, one of the neighbors with the shoeboxes, made a deal with me and probably all the neighborhood kids. I visited with everyone on the block regularly. She would often be puttering in her yard, fussing with her roses like a teenage girl does with her hair. She struck me as an odd sort; no kids. That was odd to us.
She was a frail, sparrow-looking thing. I always thought sparrow because of her beak-like nose and receding chin, which gave her those avian features, and while I don’t recall her exact name today, it would not surprise me to learn it was Robin Byrd, or Bobbi Swift. Her clothes hung on her like they were on oddly bent hangers, and she trembled when she lit up, a faraway look as her dark eyes glazed over, and she recalled the flood of memories from the War that rushed into her anew with that first drag. Her arms, they were as translucent as bone china in the sunlight, and her blue veins seemed to pulse with her rapid heart.
She once took us into her living room and we sat on odd tufted velveteen furniture from another era, inherited from someone in the family. She specifically noted what she was looking for: there were several different varieties of cigarette coupons back then, but for god’s sake, they were different colors; did she think we were idiots? Probably. She wanted the gold ones. She would pay; a dime and a nickel for fifty. With this looming reward, the beginnings of a plan percolated in my young brain.
I regularly visited a couple of really old guys, older than my grandparents age, who smoked those Chesterfields and Old Golds like chimneys, sometimes leaving one burning in one part of the garage while they lit up another one. They were garage people. With their compatriots, they hung out there every day. A couple of them lived there. It was a house almost as old as they were. Clearly a farm house. The new homes sprouted up all around this old Craftsman with its peculiar porch and oddly shaped trapezoidal rock pillars holding big beams. They were always there in that garage, and they had a leviathan overstuffed couch, so old that it was colorless, parked in there like a car. The garage, unlike the newer design of the neighborhood I lived in, which was only a block away, existed apart from the house, way at the back of the property, with two cracked and bony concrete ribbons leading across the yard to it, overgrown here and there with crabgrass like a lost city.
It must have struck them as odd why a little kid would come around, but they seemed flattered by my attentions and willingness to pick up their trash, especially their cigarette trash. They had one of those mysterious garages with a bunch of old stuff hanging from the rafters like slabs of meat, a fascinating composition of odd cages, sporting equipment, scientific apparatus, landscaping paraphernalia, and just anonymous stuff too good to throw away, perhaps detritus from a life shed like a snakeskin before the War and its roiling cloud of darkness engulfed them all. They smoked Old Golds and Chesterfields by the carton. Their trash was a treasure trove of deposit bottles and those little coupons. They had a faded general store style 7-up cooler, flaky white paint with aluminum showing through. They drank sodas like they were beers in some long-forgotten bar, lingering over the long neck glass soda bottle in a long sugary kiss. They all had the old man’s habit of unconsciously saying a guttural “ahh” after each swig, as they wiped their wizened mouths with the dark spotted backs of their hands. They had an air of decay about them that was unsettling, but it was not something I consciously felt. Still, the decay was quite visible, blue scaly patches that lurked just under their thinning white hair, a yellowing scab that never seemed to heal on the forearm, or the crack of a rheumy cough that seemed to portend more than just a cold. They also wore strange clothing that I now know were prewar style undershirts and pants, high waisted things with suspenders.
I always arrived with my Radio Flyer wagon in tow and left with a ransom of empty pop bottles and any other things from the old garage that one of the old guys deigned to give me. This of course included the gold cigarette coupons. I swear these guys powered through twenty packs a day between five of them and their friends. It didn’t take me long to build up enough coupons to get 15 cents from the neighbor lady.
It was a sweet gig. I scored candy and toy money, on my own. I often talked one of the older kids into accompanying me to the corner stores. The penny candy counter was at the toy store, which was next to the liquor store that cashed in the bottles. These were smart merchants, combining the children’s vices.
Penny candy was awesome. In those days it was often a volume of something for a penny. Three cheap bubble gums. Four sixlets (a chocolate shelled thing like an M&M) for a penny. Wax confections, like flavored liquid in wax soda bottles, or flavored giant red lips. Atomic Fireball Jawbreakers. All purchased without parental supervision, which undoubtedly enhanced the taste.
Then there were the cheap “Made In Japan” toys. Ethereal things that lasted the afternoon before they were worn out. Small temporary tattoos, cardboard cars, balsa wood gliders, and Green Army Men. My favorite were the putt-putt boats made of tin. This necessitated playing with matches, so generally that was something you had to sneak out of mom’s purse. A putt-putt boat had a small candle you lit and placed under a tiny boiler you filled with water. When the water boiled, it made the boiler flex and the steam exited from two tiny tailpipes, powering the little tin boat. Perfect for the shallow end of the LA river that coursed behind our neighborhood. The inherent danger in the whole contraption eluded us, disguised by the charm of a 15¢ tin seaworthy boat we used to terrorize pollywogs.
I continued this way for what seemed like a lifetime. Time moves laconically when you are young. I slipped away from my friends, unwilling to share the old men and their garage bounty. They always greeted me warmly, like one of the guys. They listened to the radio. Not the radio like every family had in their kitchen in various colors of Bakelite. Ours was dark maroon with gold trim, about the size of a breadbox, a rather elegant look I thought, compared to the next-door neighbor’s gaudy turquoise and white one. NO, they listened to a thing the size of a washing machine with a giant backlit glass dial the size of a dinner plate. The dial was missing those little Civil Defense markings (CD in a little circle) that were on all modern radios in the 1950s, a manifestation of the grim realities of atomic warfare. These were stations that you tuned to “in the event of enemy attack.” They didn’t even bother to use the word “unlikely”.
The cabinet of the old man’s radio had glorious wood inlays, and dark mahogany grained parts. The sound was somehow deeper and more mellifluous. I listened with them to prewar swing music and old radio shows, vestiges of family entertainment pre-television. I had heard of these things yet had no frame of reference to understand them. Like Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy. A weird concept, a ventriloquist on the radio. Made no sense to a modern ’50s kid. Gangbusters. Jack Benny. Highway Patrol. Gunsmoke. I learned these were all popular radio shows before becoming Televised. The old guys regaled us with different tales of a life “back east”. Back then, everyone in Los Angeles came from somewhere else. My family was different than most; dating back to my great great great grandparents, my family came from California. But these old guys, they spoke of tales from an alien world that sounded like the black and white movies we saw on TV. Flatbush. Staten Island. Brooklyn. The Bronx. Philly. Front stoops, whatever those were.
They kibitzed about the Yankees and the Giants, and the Dodgers. They told tales of Weepin’ Willie and Pockets Malone. Of course, always one or two mob stories. Those usually ended with “No one knows what happened to him.”
After what seemed like an endless string of temperate days and clinking wagon trips to the liquor store, followed by visits to the bird lady and a 15-cent payoff, I awoke late one night in August because of a stream of sirens nearby. The walls off the house across from my bedroom window were flashing red from the lights.
I was drawn to emergency vehicles like moths to a flame. So were all my friends. It was weird, and we knew it. I’ll tell more about this later because in the ’50s in our brand-new neighborhoods, it seemed people were crashing their cars a lot.
I sneaked out from my bedroom and expertly eased the front door open silently. It was oddly temperate outside, probably still in the 70s. As I stepped off our porch I saw Mike, the hoodlum from next door. He liked me. He seemed happy and oblivious at the same time. He was wobbling as he walked. I chalked it up to being really sleepy; I found out years later it was heroin. Mike, besides sharing my name, was the coolest cat on the street, if not the world. He was a classic greaser from central casting, with a flat top haircut, comb at the ready, motorcycle boots, jeans and white t-shirt with a pack of Marlboros rolled into the sleeve. He passed his days in the garage with his lowered Mercury and his hoodlum friends. Mike’s whole family seemed out of place here among the new houses and shiny families. They were different. Mom called them “the Real McCoys” after a popular TV show of the day. It was based on the premise of West Virginia Hillbillies moving to LA. I think this had something to do with their accents, but at my age, nothing was really clear to me unless it involved toys or candy. Mom told me to avoid him so of course I hovered near his garage whenever possible. Mike liked me and had me hand him tools in the garage when he was under his ’49 Mercury. Whenever I hung around Mike, I felt like I was getting a rare glimpse of how to be older and cool. Mike spotted me. “Mikie! How are you, man? Looks like something big is going down over on Corbin. Wanna go see?” I nodded vigorously, and we walked three houses down to the end of the block. The riot of red lights was echoing off the colorless night time neighborhood homes. I noticed several adults were in the gathering crowd. I looked down the street to the source of all this; there was a huge fire ablaze, flames 30 feet high and a cascade of sparks shooting from the roof of an old garage. I recognized the old house’s porch and realized it was the garage of my old man pals. The garage was engulfed by a ravenous blaze that brought more fire trucks than I had ever seen in one place. The orange glow and shower of sparks mixed eerily with the red lights. Sometimes I have dreams that take place with lots of sparks and red lights and a general orangeness just like what I saw right then. After a while the fire died down and people began to drift away. “Those old coots smoked like chimneys”, I heard a neighbor lady say. “Probably left one burning on that old couch I’ll bet.”
Mike turned to me and said “C’mon Mikie, lets get back home before someone misses us.” I walked silently up the street with him. I managed to slip back in the house without anyone waking up.
The next day, I walked over to the remains of the garage, thinking there might still be some pop bottles around. The totality of the fire was stunning. Rivulets of blackened water still flowed from the site. There were no walls, just a few charred two by fours, burnt like a stick in a campfire. There were twisted metal skeletal remains of miscellaneous things that no longer had any discernable form. I picked up the remains of a mop and pushed the stick around curiously into piles of charred rubble and exploded cans of paint thinner. The smell was distinctive in its mixture of solvents and different kinds of burned wood, which lent it a sweetened note not unlike some beach bonfires containing the inevitable dropped marshmallows.
“HEY! What’re you doing?” yelled a figure from the porch. It shocked me. I froze in youthful terror. He walked up to me. It wasn’t one of the old guys. It was a guy in a sleeveless undershirt around my dad’s age. I couldn’t stop looking at his hairy shoulders. He spoke again, adopting a kindlier tone when he saw how young I was. “You shouldn’t be back here. Where’s your mom?”
I pointed towards my house. “Over there. I come here all the time. Where are the old men? They are friends of mine.”
He shook his head slowly. “They had to move. Too old to stay here alone. They came and got them last night. Old men get confused. Ed and his friends couldn’t drive any more. You have a Grandpa?”
I looked at him with an expression of worry. “Yeah. Are they coming to get him too?”
He laughed and herded me along with his big hairy arms. “I don’t think so. But you need to stay away from here. It’s not safe for kids.” I headed for home. I noticed as I walked by the old house they had piled furniture on the lawn.
I asked mom later about the old guys. Turned out she knew all about them.
“Those old farts all lived together like it was a college dorm. We caught one once wandering around at night with no pants. Couldn’t remember where he lived, and if it wasn’t for us knowing he’d still be wandering around to this day. I heard after the fire they decided it would be best to put them in a home.”
“But they already had a home” I said. Also, I had no idea what a college dorm was.
“No, an Old Folks home. Where they could get supervised and taken care of. Old people like that need special care. It’s a wonder nothing happened before now. Now go wash your hands, they are filthy. In fact, use the Lava under dad’s sink”
“Uh huh. Yes mom.” As I lathered up that gritty grey foam and my fingers began to turn pink again, I planned the rest of my day. A visit to the bird lady was called for. She had implied cagily once she had a lot of soda bottles. Since I could no longer provide her with gold cigarette currency, perhaps we could make an alternate arrangement. Wait! Pauline next door smoked Chesterfields. And Edie Reichel next door to my friend Randy’s house did too!
This plan crashed to earth quickly. Pauline and Edie both saved the coupons for themselves. Dispirited, I walked down the street, heading to the bird lady’s home with its distinctive flowers blooming along a low two-rail fence. No one had a fence in their front yard then. Everyone had a newly grown lawn that gently sloped down to the fresh concrete sidewalk. But bird lady had a fence, and it was entwined with roses and dahlias and such. The flowers were something that reminded me of my grandma, who had an amazing green thumb. Grandma’s place was a riot of blossoms, roses, and vegetable gardens. It was this visual connection that made me comfortable with the bird lady. She always left her door open, so I usually walked right in. Today was different. The door was closed. Back then, I never knocked. Firstly, I was little, and I didn’t understand the physics of how to knock on a door. So, whenever I tried, it didn’t make any sound. Secondly, all the homes were new. The doorbells always worked. I rang the doorbell.
The door swung open slowly. It was a young lady. Judy Cartwright from the house next door. She knew me. Her Dad, Gene, was a marine in the war, just like my dad. This was almost a familial bond as far as we kids knew. So I felt a distant kinship with Judy. The feeling was certainly returned. Our families did things like backyard barbecues, and the men gathered in one another’s yards to actually build barbecues out of brick and mortar. It was a close-knit neighborhood. Seeing Judy in the house next door wasn’t that unusual, but there was a vibe that was different that day. Judy’s face clouded with concern. “Mikie”, she said. “Mrs. Wellesley can’t play today. She’s sick in bed.”
“Oh” I half mumbled, looking down at my feet. I couldn’t hide my disappointment.
“Wait, she left a note for you.” Judy reached down to an ornate carved table in the front hall. She passed an envelope over to me. I recognized the heft meant a coin was in there. “Thanks, Judy” I mumbled. I back up and turned abruptly and took off at a run. I ran everywhere back then. I ran five houses down to my house and banged through the front door.
“Mikie?” mom yelled from the kitchen. She was elbow deep in a baking project.
“Going to my room, mom.” Mom was a stellar mom. She baked fresh cookies and pies and made her own bread. She doted on my sister and me, and we had specific hours for reading study every day. I could read really early. I didn’t need her help to read bird lady’s note.
I opened the envelope and pulled out the note. It smelled of old lady perfume. My grandmother wore the same kind. The note was in shaky script, like she was writing in a moving bus.
Dear Mikie
I’m afraid I will have to go away soon for a long time. I know how you treasured soda pop bottles. I have several boxes of them in the garage. When my family is here show them this note and they will give them to you. Remember to always be a good boy.
Yours,
Mrs. Wellesley
I didn’t understand the gist of this note. I only saw “several boxes” and lost context after that. I had no idea she was writing me a goodbye note. It was not only unexpected, but completely unheard of in my world. I upended the envelope, and a 50-cent piece fell out.
I walked out front and looked up the street. There was an ambulance parked in front of bird lady’s house. Not a fire engine red city ambulance, but a private all white 1952 Cadillac Ambulance. The sight of this huge white thing scared me, like death was present, an unseen skeletal hand was hovering nearby to snatch me up. I inched up the sidewalk slowly and arrived tentatively as they were closing the door on the great white beast. I couldn’t look in the window.
Judy walked up to me. “Poor thing, she’s almost gone. Doctor says she won’t make the weekend.”
I was stunned, silent. I glumly walked up the sidewalk back home. I didn’t check to see if her relatives were there. I wanted nothing to do with her cases of bottles. It was unusually humid. The sky was dark in the east. Hurricane off Baja, said a neighbor.
The next day, a warm rain fell. I still have that 50-cent piece.
