Tag Archives: memoirs

Memoirs -- fact and fiction, San Miguel de Allende, Writings

A book fell into my lap and changed everything; a magical end to the 1960s

Showing up late for a party stoned and tipsy wasn’t very original in late-1969, though I was getting damned good at it — and tired of it all — a rudderless college drop-out, dodging the draft, hiding out in Washington D.C. in the shadow of the Selective Service.

I was fast becoming a mess.

Nobody at John and Linda’s party noticed – even when I stumbled back against the bookshelf and slid to the floor while Jenny from West Virginia badgered me with her latest career dilemma: Airline stewardess? Or a psychologist?

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Memoirs -- fact and fiction, Writings

My first Thanksgiving. 1950

My cousin Maura Manley passed away on Friday. She was seven years younger than me, but the first of our adult cousins to go.

About the same time, this post popped up on Facebook. And a picture of my mother in a hospital bed in Florida. She and I spent her last Thanksgiving together, although I had to eat alone in the cafeteria and she had the institutional fare in her room. Still, we spent the day together. One of our last.

I got to spend time with Maura this summer, when she was happy, healthy, and reveling in all the family gathered for a reunion in Pennsylvania. There were a lot of us.

I’m posting this here because, well, because it keeps family from disappearing, as a time when family is starting to do just that.

In the picture above: Yes, I’m the one who looks like a butterball turkey on my grandfather’s lap. Eight months old. My older brother, Jim, is to the right. He was an old hand at this Thanksgiving thing, a veteran. You can tell by how jaded he looks.

Our folks, Bob and Pat, are at left. At right, my dad’s siblings Don and Mary Lou. Clearly hadn’t met their forever partners yet, but soon. All three of the kids were married for life. They did that in those days. Don and Janet had five sons. Mary Lou and Bill had six daughters and two sons. Jim and I ended up with six more brothers and a sister.

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Memoirs -- fact and fiction, San Miguel de Allende

Luck runs out for Lucky Lady Too but not for globe-hopping pilot, Bob Gannon

It was such a relief last week to learn that my old friend Bob Gannon crashed his 56-year-old Cessna 182 just outside of Las Vegas.

Of course, he walked away from the crash. The plane wasn’t called Lucky Lady Too for nothing.

Let me interject that I am simply relieved to know that Bob is still alive. And flying. I confess that I periodically check the news for recent Bob Gannon and Lady Too exploits — or an obituary. I haven’t found either in years.

Both to my distress and relief.

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Memoirs -- fact and fiction, San Miguel de Allende, Uncategorized, Writings

The perfume of sweaty youth and stale beer that was Hussong’s Cantina

Hussong’s Cantina on Ruiz Street in Ensenada, Baja, is one of those checklist places that anyone from San Diego had to visit at least once.

An original Caesar salad in Tijuana (or one of the more unsavory attractions), a margarita at the Rosarito Beach Hotel, a stop for lobster and a pitcher of margaritas in Puerto Nuevo, and a night at Hussong’s, ebbing and flowing with the tide of drunken masses.

Now that was a pretty good weekend.

Hussong’s was unique among cantinas. It wasn’t artificially constructed as some faux Mexican fantasy to pull in the tourists with campy decor and T-shirts. Hussong’s holds liquor license No. 2 in Ensenada and is in the same building John Hussong bought and gussied up in 1892.

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San Miguel de Allende, Writings

Parables from the life of Elsmarie Norby: Her memoir is the bible on how to be a good ex-patriate

“Go sit on a rock, and children will find you.” That’s the simple counsel of Elsmarie Norby, the founder of Ojalá Niños, a rural San Miguel de Allende program that encourages scores of children to explore their artistic side.

In Elsmarie’s case, it wasn’t really a rock. “I opened my gate,” she says.

Elsmarie moved to the rural community of San Miguel Viejo in 2007 and built a house like no other in the community. It had floors. It had windows. It had furniture. It had a kitchen with modern appliances. And it had a front gate.

Nowadays she says she was “a very strange person” to the residents. Especially strange to the children who would peer into her yard through the front gate. She didn’t know she was such an object of curiosity, an outlier, really. Not at first.

Elsmarie recalled the first time she invited the neighborhood kids in. “They stood frozen at the entrance … then entered wide-eyed. They had never seen a refrigerator, furniture, art on the walls …”

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Memoirs -- fact and fiction, San Miguel de Allende, Writings

We had a time back then, didn’t we?

An old friend sent me a list today of all the former employees of the Wilson Publishing Company who would be attending a reunion in the next week or so.

The list spans more than 40 years. I was surprised to find that I know or recognize nearly half the names. Each name sent me into fresh reverie, triggered a sweet memory of another era.

My friend, Brian Mitchell, like me, was an editor of one of Wilson’s several weekly newspapers in Southern Rhode Island. Brian’s was the newest of the three and he got to create his paper from scratch – a most challenging and yet, enviable, task.

Mine was a hand-me-down, more than 100 years old but well-cared for – the flagship paper of the little Wilson empire, The Narragansett Times.

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Memoirs -- fact and fiction, San Miguel de Allende, Writings

Semper Fi, Dad. Semper, Fi.

Robert J. Hawkins, U.S.M.C. medical corpsman in World War II

The machine-gun fire came out of nowhere, the way it is supposed to in war.

Or so it seemed to the Marines who were caught in an open field next to a presumably abandoned farmhouse. Incorrectly presumed empty, as it turned out.

The carelessness cost the platoon one soldier. He lay on the ground about 10 yards away from the stone wall behind which his comrades took refuge.

He was still alive. They could hear his agonizing cries for help. They could see him, lying there out in the open.

The squad’s 19-year-old medical corpsman had already seen his share of death and savage injuries since their battalion had waded ashore on the island of Saipan. And now, more of the same on the neighboring island of Tinian.

During the initial bloody assault on Saipan, the corpsman was encountering a dead or wounded Marine every 10 yards or so, by his estimate. This made his progress slower than the other Marines. They relentlessly pushed the enemy to the other side of the island and the sea, leaving a trail of dead and wounded for the corpsman to sort out.

He’d already taken grenade fragments in his hand, leg, and shoulder —  for which he’d eventually get the Purple Heart.

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Memoirs -- fact and fiction, Rants and raves, San Miguel de Allende

‘Hit ’em! Hit ’em! Hit the sons of bitches! Hit ’em!’

I stare at this photograph that I took in — when was it? — 1970? 1971? I stare and I wonder, how many of my fellow Vietnam War protesters were part of the thuggery that took place this week at the Capitol?

Some, for sure. They would be in their very late-60s and mid-70s now. I was 21 when I snapped these photos.

A friend who just saw them asked, “Did you and your fellow hippies storm the Capitol?”

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Memoirs -- fact and fiction, San Miguel de Allende, Writings

Soon to be on Netflix, ‘Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom’ brings back some violent memories

Chadwick Boseman is Levee in “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom.” It was his last performance as an actor before passing away in August.

Netflix begins streaming  “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” on December 18. The August Wilson play has enjoyed an excellent life on Broadway and beyond. And for good reason. It is a powerful creation. 

I think that in the Denzel Washington-produced movie we will see what a treasure and tragic loss was the death of Chadwick Boseman in August. This was his last performance.

This most recent news from Netflix sends me back nearly to the creation of the play, in 1982.

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Memoirs -- fact and fiction, San Miguel de Allende, Writings

The cabbie’s life: One night in Toronto

Back in the day — before Uber & Lyft, before Google street maps, before the Internet — there was a thing known as The Thomas Guide. It was a spiral-bound book of maps and street indexes for many of the major West Coast cities in the U.S.

It was a godsend for journalists and taxicab drivers alike.

Toronto had a similar book, as I discovered one night when I arrived to cover the Toronto Film Festival for my California newspaper.

“Where to, eh?

“Sutton Place,please.”

“Good, good. Is that cab in front of us going there, too?”

“No, they’re going to another hotel.”

“Good, good. OK. Sutton Place. That’s not far. Do you know where it is?”

“No. Don’t you?”

“Yeah. Well, no. Well, sort of. I usually work the West End. Don’t get up here that much.”

“Um … Bay Street. I think it is on Bay Street.”

“Bay Street? Good. Good. Bay Street. Bay Street. Right you are.”

“I think it is a main thoroughfare here. North and south.Turn here on University. You’re bound to cross it.”

“OK. Yeah. Right you are. Here, look in this book, page four. Got to be on page four or near it. Look on four.”

“There’s no map on four.”

“What do you mean? No! Index. Look at the index. You read; I’ll drive.”

“I can’t find a map. Look here, there’s Bay Street! If you turn here, we ought to find Sutton Place.”

“I can’t turn. See the sign? It says ‘No left turn.’ You really ought to learn how to read that book. You can get anywhere with in this city with that book, you can. Ah, I’ll turn anyway.”

“Why do I need to read this book? I’ll be leaving Toronto in two days. You live here. You learn it.”

“Sure, but what if you come back? You really ought to learn.”

“You ought to learn. You live here, you drive the cab!”

“Right you are!”

“Look, there’s the Sutton. Just drop me off behind that car.”

“Right! The old Sutton! There you are! I got you here, didn’t I? You really ought to get one of these books. Invaluable! Fare’s $4.25. Told you I’d get you here. Well, have a good evening then.”

“Right. Keep the change.”

True story.

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