I got this off the Internet and if you click on it will say frangipani but I’m wondering because it does not look like our plant which we call plumeria in California. In Hawaii the plumeria is what makes the leis that adorns every tourist sooner or later. But I like the picture and since I don’t currently have pictures of ours, I’m going with this until such time as I do have.
Part 5: Remembering
The euphoria of having a job with all the comforts of bed, food and shelter and miscellaneous perks made me feel it would last as long as I wanted it to. It was not to be but I fell into the routine of my houseboy work very quickly. Up at seven, fix breakfast for the Mr. and Mrs., the Mrs would leave for her staff writer job at the Daily News while he would sit and nibble toast and coffee and browse the morning paper. About nine he would shower and dress to go to his furniture store in Huntington Park nearby.
The rest of the morning was typical houseboy work–clean up the kitchen, make the beds, do laundry as needed, tidy the house, shop for groceries. Usually by noon I was finished and time was now mine to do as I pleased. At three I would start dinner. The menu was up to me although often she would suggest it, especially if we were having company. I had no culinary imagination so I went by the cookbook which satisfied her. Early on she had coached me in the graces of table setting and serving.
After I had cleaned up the dinner dishes, the evening was mine. One of the perks of the job were free passes to sneak previews of new movies which the Mrs. received as part of her job as movie reviewer at the News. Sneak previews were very popular with Hollywood and the public. Sometimes in the back row, dark glasses would come off and if you were extremely lucky you might glimpse a favorite actor or actress.
What luck! My very first one was “Flying Down To Rio” with the incomparable Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire and I fell in love with them–an adoration that would last through seventy years and counting. There was a young chap of sixteen or so next door and I would invite him to join me whenever I had passes. He in turn invited me to go with his family to the beach. Long Beach was the place to go in those days. I loved the long sandy beach that buffered each ebb and flow of the tide. I was just as fascinated by the strand and all the funny shops and eateries that wanted to take your money.
The Mr. & Mrs, owned a ketch and took me out on it on one occasion. I was a bit queasy at first but when they set the sail I was even more worried when the deck suddenly took a tilt as the sail filled. I soon began to enjoy it, fascinated by all the boats, the curving shoreline, the breakwater, the slip with a huge ship up in the air being worked on. One of their recreational activities when they took their boat out was the harvesting of abalone, a much easier thing to do in the thirties (A recent article in the Los Angeles Times recounted the high number of deaths by drowning of divers searching for the tasty seafood. Over the years the abalone has been been harvested so much they can only be found in deeper and more dangerous waters.) The Mr & Mrs would dump their catch in the sink and I would go to work. Cut into slices and pounded to tenderness, dipped in egg and bread crumbs, and deep fried, the abalone was a tasty dish.
The Mr. & Mrs were very nice to work for and yet I was beginning to be very unhappy and restless for a change. Although they were more than happy with my cooking, and went out their way to tell me so, I was always in an anxious state before each evening meal, worrying that it might not be quite right. The house work was terribly boring, laundry, vacuuming and ironing. Looking back I can see that at eighteen I didn’t have enough maturity to deal with my boredom. There was the library which had befriended me that first week, I could have gone to church no doubt to meet young people, there was night classes that might have stimulated me in the right direction. None of these came to mind and it seemed the only way I could escape my boredom, was to quit. And so after about seven months I gave my notice. (To be continued.)
ON POLITICS
Well, we did it right this time. On November 4th, we elected a man whose skin is the color of black. We judged him to be intelligent enough to be commander-in-chief of all our military forces, and smart enough to change the course of the country. On January 20, 2009 he will swear to uphold the laws of our Constitution and we will trust him to do so. Not every one voted for him and the margin of his victory may not have been enough to completely eliminate the racial divide, but it certainly punched a lot of holes in it. It will be very hard to believe that things will not get better. Choosing an African-American only one generation from Africa to be our president is so unprecedented that we still shake our heads and ask “Is this real?” Although he wasn’t my first choice (yeah! how about a woman running for president–how unprecedented was that?) I am proud that we did it. I think our world prestige went up several notches because of it. Now we wait and see if he can deliver His proposed appointments augur well.
POETRY
As we grow older, as I and others have, we become aware of the transitoriness of life. Some five hundred years ago an Aztec poet asked the same question:
Is it true that one lives only on earth?
Not forever on earth: only a short while here
Even jade will crack, even gold will break,
Even quetzal feathers will rend,
Not forever on earth: only a short while here.
(The Aztec Man and Tribe by Victor W. Von Hagen)
And today’s HAIKU:
We grow older
Every time we see
The bared limbs of the oak.
That’s it. Dean