Pasadena Green
So on the assumption that Cal was going to be in the Rose Bowl this year I did something for my father. I bought him tickets. It seemed certain a month or so back –Cal in the Rose Bowl, winning. They were undefeated. All Fall, I’d been listening to people revel on their way home from Memorial Stadium each Saturday. I brushed away with paint and stain from the scaffolding surrounding the overpriced exterior of my Craftsman, and former frat boys talked of bowl invites and where they were going to get a beer as they walked below me on College Ave.
Now, my Dad is a bit of football fanatic. Yeah, not fan, fanatic! He played tackle football for the Air Base we were at in England until he was 35. Where upon he injured his knee, had surgery, was out on disability for four months, and in pain for the rest of his life. So he took up coaching. He coached that same team that ruined his knee for two seasons after. Subsequent to that he has coached Pop Warner leagues, and local high school teams. If he’s not coaching it, he’s watching the game. Fall is his time of the year. When he’s not attempting to extinguish the life of a hoofed animal, wandering casually through the forests of Montana, he’s got a football game on the TV. His two favorite times of the year are Thanksgiving and New Years. It’s all football all the time for like four days straight. Course, his real favorite activity is to be watching a football game, at Thanksgiving, the Network breaks for a commercial, and he notices a six-point buck in the field below his cabin as he’s getting another glass of ice tea. He keeps a rifle by the door.
Now, as my Dad has gotten older,
and he lives in Montana and shoots hoofed-antlered animals,
and I live in Berkeley and eat organic vegetables,
so my neighbors think I’m saving the Earth while driving my four-wheel drive pickup,
it has occurred to me,
that my father
and I
don’t get to share common interests much.
Not that I don’t have common interests with my father. I mean we both like working on old cars, restoring old houses, discussing the limited thinking ability of our neighbors and President of the United States, and drinking cappuccino’s. But he lives in the boonies, so we don’t discuss the President much and he also has to drive a considerable distance for a cappuccino. But, up on my scaffolding the first weekend in November, here in Berkeley, I figured, "What the Hell, Kerry is going to be President, and Cal is going to win the Rose Bowl, I should celebrate." I called in a favor with a U.C Regent, and bought my Dad and me tickets to the Rose Bowl. Then I got him and Mom airline tickets to LAX, and met them down there on New Years Eve. We would go to the parade, and then the game. Cal would win. Dad would live important part of his fanaticism. We would have shared a common activity of interest. No hoofed animals would die. Lot’s of plants could show off their sexual organs to admiring crowds and Mom could, ah, look at those sexual organs. (I kind of think she just tolerates the whole football thing.) After all the attempts of the plants to have sex had gone to waste and the game was over, Dad, Mom and me could go to dinner and discuss how many cars my next door neighbor is going to buy and then wreck backing into her driveway. She’s gone through five since I moved here.
So there we were. Pasadena California, looking at flowered floats pass by. In a few hours the game would start, and Cal would kick some schools ass from a Red state like Texas. Problem was, Cal wasn’t in the Rose Bowl. But I had tickets and we were in Pasadena. Who the Hell played this year? Michigan and Texas? Who won? You might wonder how I would not know? I went to the game right? Wrong.
Mom and I were sitting there looking at flowers fall off floats. Dad was reading the newspaper. He kept mumbling to himself. "38 Caddilac 8-Cylinder, Hmm." My Mom and I had looked in his direction a few times as he mumbled, but he ignored us. I looked at my mother. She just rolled her eyes a bit, and said, "Here we go again."
A few more floats went by, and my Dad said, "Hey, you got your cell phone?" I handed mine over to him. Not asking why he didn’t use his own. I just figured he was saving roaming charges. He back-folded the paper and put it on his lap, pointing at a number in a classified ad, and dialed the phone. In a moment he was talking to someone about a 38 Caddilac they had for sale.
When my Dad gets and idea in his head, there is no stopping him. I give as a reference his playing around with the Internet. He saw a job online once, long after he retired, for radar engineers in Nashua, New Hampshire. Now for various reasons he applied for that job and ended up getting hired at a pretty ridiculous salary by Montana standards. Never mind the fact he lived on fifty or so acres of land and a three story cabin he had built by himself in Montana. Never mind he would have to maintain an apartment now, and fly back and fourth to his wife a lot. He wanted that job. He said, he wanted to put more money in savings, this would be a way to do it. We doubted his motives. But, for various reasons, which I will not go into, because its more intriguing if you let your imagination run wild, my mother told him to go do it for eighteen months. Before his time in Nashua was up, he had managed to not only get a job there, but join a local theater company, act in a few plays, and buy a blue Chrysler convertible to compliment to his Red pickup that he brought with him from Montana. When he bought it, he called me and said something about being balanced in his transportation needs? Course he could have walked to work from where he was staying, and he neglected to tell my mother he’d bought the Chrysler. He asked how I would tell her about it. I just laughed and told him if he wanted to stay married and save money to sell the car. He said he couldn’t sell it, it was such a good deal. He had that "such a good deal" tone in his voice as he talked to whoever on my cell phone on the street in Pasadena.
My mother just shook her head and looked at the latest float from the City of L.A. to drift by. I knew we were in trouble.
When the phone call ended, my Dad looked at a few floats as they went by and then said, "I think I’ll skip the game if you don’t mind? There is a car I’d like to go look at."
Skip the game, Car? I mean, I didn’t care I guess. Cal wasn’t in the game. I could scalp the tickets. "Ah, sure. Car?" I said. Mom just pursed her lips a bit a looked at my Dad.
"This lady, she’s in Pasadena, has a 38 Caddilac for sale." He said. "I want to go look at it. Its only a mile or so from here. Said she could meet me at 3:00"
"You don’t want us to go?" I said, thinking of shared experiences or something.
He kind of wrinkled his nose and squinted. "Nah, it probably won’t be worth anything. I’ll meet you and Mom back at the hotel afterwards."
So, Mom and I went up to the Stadium, scalped the tickets. ($50 dollar loss on my cost BTW DAD.) Then cruised over to see a friend of mine Chris who works a JPL now. I was going to have drinks later, but as DAD decided to skip the game, I hooked up earlier with Chris. It wasn’t too long after Mom and I got back to the hotel when my cell phone rang and it was Dad on his. "Hey come out to the parking lot I want to show you something."
My Mom, just said, "Oh, oh," as she heard my Dad’s words on the cell phone. We went outside, and there he was, sitting in the driver’s seat of a sort of lime and sort of opal green 38 Caddilac convertible. The interior was white leather. It was immaculate. An ugly Zsa Zsa Gabore Green, but immaculate. My dad got out of the car before we could get to it. "98 hundred original miles," he said smirking a bit.
"Little old lady from Pasadena I said?" (Unable to resist.) Looking at the odometer. It read 9879. But who’s quibbling about my father’s rounding techniques.
"She’s a retired producer from Buena Vista studios," he said. "Knew Walt Disney when he was still alive."
Now this car is in the kind of shape that you see in showrooms. I mean it would still have the wrapping on the visors if you can imagine. But it was 67 years old and I swear I could smell new car sent on it. "How the hell did you get out here with it? I mean, where is she? This car has got to be worth a fortune?" I rattled off.
My mom just pushed her glasses up on her nose. "It looks like the black one, banker Hartley use to drive when I was a kid, in Burlingame." (Kansas, not California.) She poked at the white upholstery on the top of the passenger’s seat.
"Let me ride you back to her house. I’ll explain the deal to you two," my Dad said, opening the door to the passenger side for my mother. I hopped in back. My mom sat in front and we started off down Pasadena’s Del Mar Blvd.
It turned out owner of the car had three. A 36 Dussenberg, a 37 Auburn, and the Caddilac. All of these cars she had bought from stars when she worked for Disney in forties and fifties. Now she was too old to drive and she wanted to sell. Not that she had been driving them. She is ninety four and has the dubious distinction of having graduated from the same high school as my father in Phillipsburg, New Jersey. For some reason she has taken to my Dad and his stories of hoofed animal shooting, driving 40 Ford Coupes across the bridge between Easton PA and Phillpsburg NJ, and has agreed to let him handle selling the Dussenberg and Auburn. In exchange he gets to buy the Caddilac for $10,000. (Which BTW the way, I had to pay for temporarily to get the whole deal rolling.)
My mom personally thinks the whole thing is a little silly. Mostly, because she and Dad don’t have garage space for the Caddilac up in Montana. Despite the fact they have three garages. They just added a garage for the snow tractor this fall. Another, attached to the house, has my mom’s car in it, and the other attached to my Dad’s workshop has his Chrysler and his pick up. They also have the problem of a road that is not really accessible by a 38 Caddilac convertible of any color this time of year.
So, in the mean time, my Dad is now flying between Billings and LA starting next month to try and sell a Dussenberg and a Auburn. I have a Zsa Zsa Gabore green Cadillac in my garage in Berkeley. Dad has to decide if he want to sell his Chrysler or build another garage. My truck is relegated to street parking, and we have yet to tell my brother about this. But he reads this blog regularly and comments on my bad spelling and grammar, so he’ll figure it out soon enough. If, he reads this far. I’m also erecting crash barriers in front of the garage in case my next door neighbor really misses when she is backing into her driveway.
Now, my Dad is a bit of football fanatic. Yeah, not fan, fanatic! He played tackle football for the Air Base we were at in England until he was 35. Where upon he injured his knee, had surgery, was out on disability for four months, and in pain for the rest of his life. So he took up coaching. He coached that same team that ruined his knee for two seasons after. Subsequent to that he has coached Pop Warner leagues, and local high school teams. If he’s not coaching it, he’s watching the game. Fall is his time of the year. When he’s not attempting to extinguish the life of a hoofed animal, wandering casually through the forests of Montana, he’s got a football game on the TV. His two favorite times of the year are Thanksgiving and New Years. It’s all football all the time for like four days straight. Course, his real favorite activity is to be watching a football game, at Thanksgiving, the Network breaks for a commercial, and he notices a six-point buck in the field below his cabin as he’s getting another glass of ice tea. He keeps a rifle by the door.
Now, as my Dad has gotten older,
and he lives in Montana and shoots hoofed-antlered animals,
and I live in Berkeley and eat organic vegetables,
so my neighbors think I’m saving the Earth while driving my four-wheel drive pickup,
it has occurred to me,
that my father
and I
don’t get to share common interests much.
Not that I don’t have common interests with my father. I mean we both like working on old cars, restoring old houses, discussing the limited thinking ability of our neighbors and President of the United States, and drinking cappuccino’s. But he lives in the boonies, so we don’t discuss the President much and he also has to drive a considerable distance for a cappuccino. But, up on my scaffolding the first weekend in November, here in Berkeley, I figured, "What the Hell, Kerry is going to be President, and Cal is going to win the Rose Bowl, I should celebrate." I called in a favor with a U.C Regent, and bought my Dad and me tickets to the Rose Bowl. Then I got him and Mom airline tickets to LAX, and met them down there on New Years Eve. We would go to the parade, and then the game. Cal would win. Dad would live important part of his fanaticism. We would have shared a common activity of interest. No hoofed animals would die. Lot’s of plants could show off their sexual organs to admiring crowds and Mom could, ah, look at those sexual organs. (I kind of think she just tolerates the whole football thing.) After all the attempts of the plants to have sex had gone to waste and the game was over, Dad, Mom and me could go to dinner and discuss how many cars my next door neighbor is going to buy and then wreck backing into her driveway. She’s gone through five since I moved here.
So there we were. Pasadena California, looking at flowered floats pass by. In a few hours the game would start, and Cal would kick some schools ass from a Red state like Texas. Problem was, Cal wasn’t in the Rose Bowl. But I had tickets and we were in Pasadena. Who the Hell played this year? Michigan and Texas? Who won? You might wonder how I would not know? I went to the game right? Wrong.
Mom and I were sitting there looking at flowers fall off floats. Dad was reading the newspaper. He kept mumbling to himself. "38 Caddilac 8-Cylinder, Hmm." My Mom and I had looked in his direction a few times as he mumbled, but he ignored us. I looked at my mother. She just rolled her eyes a bit, and said, "Here we go again."
A few more floats went by, and my Dad said, "Hey, you got your cell phone?" I handed mine over to him. Not asking why he didn’t use his own. I just figured he was saving roaming charges. He back-folded the paper and put it on his lap, pointing at a number in a classified ad, and dialed the phone. In a moment he was talking to someone about a 38 Caddilac they had for sale.
When my Dad gets and idea in his head, there is no stopping him. I give as a reference his playing around with the Internet. He saw a job online once, long after he retired, for radar engineers in Nashua, New Hampshire. Now for various reasons he applied for that job and ended up getting hired at a pretty ridiculous salary by Montana standards. Never mind the fact he lived on fifty or so acres of land and a three story cabin he had built by himself in Montana. Never mind he would have to maintain an apartment now, and fly back and fourth to his wife a lot. He wanted that job. He said, he wanted to put more money in savings, this would be a way to do it. We doubted his motives. But, for various reasons, which I will not go into, because its more intriguing if you let your imagination run wild, my mother told him to go do it for eighteen months. Before his time in Nashua was up, he had managed to not only get a job there, but join a local theater company, act in a few plays, and buy a blue Chrysler convertible to compliment to his Red pickup that he brought with him from Montana. When he bought it, he called me and said something about being balanced in his transportation needs? Course he could have walked to work from where he was staying, and he neglected to tell my mother he’d bought the Chrysler. He asked how I would tell her about it. I just laughed and told him if he wanted to stay married and save money to sell the car. He said he couldn’t sell it, it was such a good deal. He had that "such a good deal" tone in his voice as he talked to whoever on my cell phone on the street in Pasadena.
My mother just shook her head and looked at the latest float from the City of L.A. to drift by. I knew we were in trouble.
When the phone call ended, my Dad looked at a few floats as they went by and then said, "I think I’ll skip the game if you don’t mind? There is a car I’d like to go look at."
Skip the game, Car? I mean, I didn’t care I guess. Cal wasn’t in the game. I could scalp the tickets. "Ah, sure. Car?" I said. Mom just pursed her lips a bit a looked at my Dad.
"This lady, she’s in Pasadena, has a 38 Caddilac for sale." He said. "I want to go look at it. Its only a mile or so from here. Said she could meet me at 3:00"
"You don’t want us to go?" I said, thinking of shared experiences or something.
He kind of wrinkled his nose and squinted. "Nah, it probably won’t be worth anything. I’ll meet you and Mom back at the hotel afterwards."
So, Mom and I went up to the Stadium, scalped the tickets. ($50 dollar loss on my cost BTW DAD.) Then cruised over to see a friend of mine Chris who works a JPL now. I was going to have drinks later, but as DAD decided to skip the game, I hooked up earlier with Chris. It wasn’t too long after Mom and I got back to the hotel when my cell phone rang and it was Dad on his. "Hey come out to the parking lot I want to show you something."
My Mom, just said, "Oh, oh," as she heard my Dad’s words on the cell phone. We went outside, and there he was, sitting in the driver’s seat of a sort of lime and sort of opal green 38 Caddilac convertible. The interior was white leather. It was immaculate. An ugly Zsa Zsa Gabore Green, but immaculate. My dad got out of the car before we could get to it. "98 hundred original miles," he said smirking a bit.
"Little old lady from Pasadena I said?" (Unable to resist.) Looking at the odometer. It read 9879. But who’s quibbling about my father’s rounding techniques.
"She’s a retired producer from Buena Vista studios," he said. "Knew Walt Disney when he was still alive."
Now this car is in the kind of shape that you see in showrooms. I mean it would still have the wrapping on the visors if you can imagine. But it was 67 years old and I swear I could smell new car sent on it. "How the hell did you get out here with it? I mean, where is she? This car has got to be worth a fortune?" I rattled off.
My mom just pushed her glasses up on her nose. "It looks like the black one, banker Hartley use to drive when I was a kid, in Burlingame." (Kansas, not California.) She poked at the white upholstery on the top of the passenger’s seat.
"Let me ride you back to her house. I’ll explain the deal to you two," my Dad said, opening the door to the passenger side for my mother. I hopped in back. My mom sat in front and we started off down Pasadena’s Del Mar Blvd.
It turned out owner of the car had three. A 36 Dussenberg, a 37 Auburn, and the Caddilac. All of these cars she had bought from stars when she worked for Disney in forties and fifties. Now she was too old to drive and she wanted to sell. Not that she had been driving them. She is ninety four and has the dubious distinction of having graduated from the same high school as my father in Phillipsburg, New Jersey. For some reason she has taken to my Dad and his stories of hoofed animal shooting, driving 40 Ford Coupes across the bridge between Easton PA and Phillpsburg NJ, and has agreed to let him handle selling the Dussenberg and Auburn. In exchange he gets to buy the Caddilac for $10,000. (Which BTW the way, I had to pay for temporarily to get the whole deal rolling.)
My mom personally thinks the whole thing is a little silly. Mostly, because she and Dad don’t have garage space for the Caddilac up in Montana. Despite the fact they have three garages. They just added a garage for the snow tractor this fall. Another, attached to the house, has my mom’s car in it, and the other attached to my Dad’s workshop has his Chrysler and his pick up. They also have the problem of a road that is not really accessible by a 38 Caddilac convertible of any color this time of year.
So, in the mean time, my Dad is now flying between Billings and LA starting next month to try and sell a Dussenberg and a Auburn. I have a Zsa Zsa Gabore green Cadillac in my garage in Berkeley. Dad has to decide if he want to sell his Chrysler or build another garage. My truck is relegated to street parking, and we have yet to tell my brother about this. But he reads this blog regularly and comments on my bad spelling and grammar, so he’ll figure it out soon enough. If, he reads this far. I’m also erecting crash barriers in front of the garage in case my next door neighbor really misses when she is backing into her driveway.
posted by Stan at 1:27 AM
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