What Goes Around

June 5, 2010 Leave a comment

Gram's House

Gram's House, Central California Coast

When I first met her, she didn’t like me. Why should she? I was there to take away her last remaining daughter.  Her first daughter had gone into the Air Force as a nurse.  And there was a son, still in high school.  My goal was that very special middle child.

Oh, she was cordial, nice enough while she waited for me to take my new blind date out for coffee, but she really didn’t like me.

It cost me less than two dollars for a great first date.  When we returned and I was invited back into the house, she had gone to bed, so I sat down at the piano and started to play.  I even sang a little bit. 

I was twenty-two and my date was eighteen, just out of high school and starting college.  I was on the football team, and since most football players weren’t expected to play and sing, I scored  my desired impression on her daughter.

Times were tough then.  Her husband was an out-of-work carpenter who soonafter went to Hollywood to build movie sets.  She stayed to support the family with a job as a nurse’s aid at 75 cents an hour.  Her husband found a lady friend and never returned from Southern California.  I married her special daughter and took her away.

All her children raised families of their own.  When she left her job at the hospital, she alternated living with her son and our family.  Over the years, I think she came to believe I was an O.K. guy.

In 1993, after an extra successful year in business, we had the cash to build her a house of her own on our property.  She was eighty-two years old.

We had a secluded hilltop acreage on the Central California Coast covered with mature oak and toyon trees and a few pines.  She enjoyed being next door to her daughter.  She enjoyed taking care of her cat and watching the deer.  She seemed very content.  Then, as the years went by, she became a little forgetful.  Sometimes she forgot to turn off the burner under her oatmeal.  But she never failed to thank me for raking the pine needles and mowing the lawn.

On December 22, 2003, a 6.5 magnitude earthquake centered off the coast at San Simeon trashed our home.  “Gram”, as the kids called her, was in town at elder day-care.  Luckily, no one was home when the quake hit.  There was serious structural damage to the main house but, except for food and broken glass covering every square foot of the floor, Gram’s house was spared.

After a major clean-up mission by an army of friends and relatives, we moved into Gram’s little house.  She made us feel very welcome.  She said she enjoyed the company.  Actually, she wasn’t feeling very well.  She had difficulty breathing in enough oxygen.  The doctor said there was a problem with her lungs.  We decided it might have been the result of something she breathed during the war when she worked as a welder in the shipyards.  But she didn’t have to go to the hospital.  She was able to stay at home.

On Valentine’s Day, she passed away peacefully in her own bed, in her own little house, surrounded by her family.

As is true for most of us, the equity in our property accounted for most of our estate.  Our home was not insured against earthquake damage and it cost over $185,000.00 to rebuild.  As if that wasn’t enough bad news, the real estate bubble evaporated just as we were ready to sell our property and move to a smaller place.  Most of our nest egg evaporated with it.

So where’s the happy ending?  What came around?

Well, soon after the earthquake, my wife’s brother began construction of a guesthouse on his property.  On July 7th, 2007 (7/7/07), we moved into our new home.  We now have an unwritten life-time lease on a beautiful little house on “La Familia Place”.  And now, from my home office, I originate Reverse Mortgages for seniors throughout California.

Reverse Mortgage, Atascadero CA

Where I originate reverse mortgages in Atascadero, CA

La Familia Place

- Marlan Jennings Holland


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Once A Duck

June 3, 2010 Leave a comment

Back in the late “50″s, after a good season at Mount San Antonio College (J.C.), I was recruited to play football at the University of Oregon.  The campus was beautiful.  The sports facilities were “historic”.  The coaches were literally “great”.  Head Coach Len Casanova (Cas) was a former President of the National Football Coaches Association.  Bill Bowerman, once Coach of the U.S. Olympic Team, and later one of the founders of Nike, was Head Track Coach.  He already had a few National Championships to his credit.

Bowerman was known for being able to spot athletic talent.  One year, I had a friend on the basketball team who was spending most of his time on the bench.  He was a great leaper and obviously a fine athlete, but at his height (six-two or three), he didn’t have the size and skills to be a standout in basketball.

Bowerman asked him to come out to the track and try running a 440.  That’s a quarter-mile.  He must have looked pretty good because he transferred to the track team and took up running.  And man, did he run.  I don’t think he ever lost a race.  As a matter of fact, he won the gold medal in the 1960 Olympics.  His name is in the record books; Otis Davis.

Back to football.  Because of a minor injury, I red-shirted my first year as a Duck.  In the Spring, I was all healed up and fired up to look good in Spring Practice.  The Oregon backfield coach was John McKay.  John had been a star running back for the Ducks in 1946.  He was a very fine coach and was notoriously feisty.

One day when I was in the football offices, he pulled out a player profile sheet and asked me what I thought about my former teammate Paul Grover.  Paul had been an outstanding quarterback at Mount SAC.  Well, I was a little insecure about my own size and prowess.  At 5’11″, 185 lbs., without blazing speed, I was an underwhelming physical specimen for Division 1-A.  I wanted to be very careful with my answer.

I told him Paul was a clever ball-handler and completed a lot of passes for a guy who wasn’t real tall.  John snapped back at me, “It says here he’s 5’9″.  That’s what I am.”  I thought to myself, “Ooooh, no!”

Anyway, they brought Paul up and he became a Duck like me.

There was another time I said the wrong thing to John McKay.  I was walking through the Athletic Department and I saw John with a big bandage around his hand.  I asked him what happened.  John didn’t smoke cigarettes, but he liked to kick back with a cigar once in a while.

In answer to my question, John mumbled that a book of matches had blown up on him.  Without thinking, I said, “Didn’t you CLOSE COVER BEFORE STRIKING?”.  He just stared at me. I thought to myself, “Oooooh, no, not again.”

John was quick-tempered and sometimes hard to deal with, but he had a great sense of humor.  Paul was from Anaheim.  I remember hearing John yell at practice, “Grover, if you can’t get that right, you’re going to run laps all the way back to dizzy-land.”

A few years later, John McKay was hired as head coach at U.S.C.  As football fans know, he built quite a dynasty there.  Traditionally, their last game of the season was against Notre Dame.  One year the Trojans got humiliated at home 51 to zip.

In the locker room after the game, the players dragged in with their heads hanging down.  Some were even sobbing.  John had invited Paul Grover to watch the game from the sidelines, so Paul was in the locker room.  He told me what happened.

John waited a while, then stood up on a bench and said, “Just remember, 800 million Chinese don’t even know we played today.”  After another (rare) lop-sided loss, his Trojans limped into the locker room dirty, sweaty, battered and beat.  John didn’t think they played hard enough.  He stood silently for a while, then said, “If any of you people need a shower, go ahead and take it.”

Another Duck, John Robinson, became head coach when McKay left U.S.C. “Robbie”, as Paul and I knew him, was a teammate on our Rose Bowl Team in 1958.  I always enjoyed the story he told about his experience in that game because it was also mine.

He said when the coaches finally sent him in on defense, the Ohio State quarterback looked across the line of scrimmage and was so terrified that he knelt down on one knee.  We lost that game 7 to 10.

Oregon Alumnus Dan Fouts (of San Diego Charger fame) was announcing a recent Pac-10 football game telecast when his colleague asked him, “Weren’t  you once a Duck?”  Dan answered, “I am a Duck.”

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Angel Territory

June 1, 2010 Leave a comment

Angel Territory

Pictured from right to left: BRUCE KING, local sportscaster, LEN CASANOVA, distinguished Oregon Head Football Coach, YOURS TRULY

Back in the sixties, I was working in television.  It was a small station in Eugene, home of the University of Oregon.  Since I had graduated with a B.A. in Economics, it seemed logical for me to start out in the shop building sets. I was paid a salary of $465.00 a month and I worked about 50 hours a week. I think that pencils-out to less than $2.20 an hour.  That seemed logical too because it was a long time ago and I loved my work.

In the shop, I was literally on the ground floor.  I built sets, swept up, and did whatever I was told.  Soon, I got to run camera.  Then I got to be a floor man.  I learned to shoot, develop and edit 16mm film.  They let me start announcing, then directing, then producing programs.   Wow!  What an experience and education.  After a while, I made Production Manager.

Since I had played football at Oregon, I figured I was the best choice to produce and direct the first live show to star head coach Len Casanova.  So, I assigned myself.  The show was called “Cas’s Corner”.

I got a sideline press pass for all the football games to take 16mm slow-motion film from field level.  I got knocked down a couple of times, but I always came up with some exciting footage.

After it was shot, I took it back to the studio and processed it.  When it was dry, I edited it and spliced it together.  Then I reviewed the best plays, timed the segments, and wrote it into the show format.  What could be more fun than that?

Cas (pronounced Caz) was perfect for TV.  Middle-aged, a little gruff, with a handsome, rugged face and a full head of wavy white hair.  Cas was like a father to his players.

He was a devout Catholic.  Once, he went to Rome and came back with some St. Christopher medals that he said had been blessed by the Pope.  He also had been a Commander in the Navy in World War II.  When he heard my former teammate Paul Grover was going into the Navy to be flying jets off a carrier in Viet Nam, he gave a medal to him and told him to wear it and be careful.

One year, the Blue Angels came to town to fly an Air Show.  They extended an invitation for someone from the station to take a ride with the Captain. Even though I was not a news man, I considered myself the best choice to go for the ride.

I arrived at Mahlon-Sweet Airport and reported in. They gave me an orange jumpsuit to put on and I walked out to meet the Captain. I confess I don’t remember his name, but he was very sharp and a great representative for the Blue Angels.

We talked briefly about the film camera I had brought and what I knew about flying (nothing). Then I put on my helmet and climbed into the seat behind him.

The next thing I knew, we were streaking down the runway, and then airborne. We circled around awhile and he asked me through the intercom in my helmet how I was doing. I said, “Great!” That seemed to please him. Maybe some of his former passengers had experienced a bit of motion sickness. And, he knew how much fun we both could have if I could take it.

He told me we were about to fly in low and then do a maneuver that would show me something about gravity. It was a grey, overcast day and I silently hoped his visibility was adequate.

He accelerated and aimed down toward the airport. I don’t know how fast he was going, but at 10 feet above the runway, it was almost too fast. Suddenly he pulled up the nose of the plane, increased power again and we went almost straight up. I felt like my whole body would be pulled down through the seat. The skin on my face was down around my neck.

We shot up through the cloud cover and out the other side into bright sunshine. As we leveled off, the Captain asked me again how I was doing. I told him I was loving it. He said I had just experienced 6 G’s.  That’s six times the pull of gravity.

From above, the layer of clouds looked like a white carpet. It was beautiful. We were skimming along at six-hundred some-odd miles an hour and he asked me if I’d like to take control. I thought, “Are you kidding?” But I said, “Sure!”

Actually I think all he really let me take over were the rudder pedals, but I could actually make us move left and right. He said, “O.K. let’s get you some film for the evening news”.

Then he flew us in what he called a parabolic arch parallel to the curvature of the earth. It didn’t feel any different, except it resulted in weightlessness; zero G’s. When I had my camera ready, he floated the logbook over his shoulder and back to me.  What a trip.

Years later, I learned that my ride was in the same basic aircraft that Paul had flown over Viet Nam; an A-4. The difference was that Paul’s was loaded with weaponry and didn’t have a back seat. Also he had to take off and land on the deck of a carrier rolling in the ocean.

He told me about a night mission he flew to re-fuel two F-8 fighters heading back to the carrier.  After they both took fuel, one faded off to his left and the other off to the right.  Paul was surprised that they didn’t stay closer to him because he was lead plane back to the ship.  He was wondering what was going on when he glanced over his left shoulder and saw a green wing tip light coming straight at him.

In one instant he felt the impact, heard the tearing metal of his tail section being ripped away, and realized his airplane couldn’t fly any more.

He pulled the ejection lever and was propelled out into the darkness.  Within minutes he splashed down in one piece in the Tonkin Gulf.  After bobbing around in his life raft for a few hours, the U.S. Navy pulled him out of the drink. The pilot who hit him didn’t make it.

Of course, Paul always wore his Saint Christopher medal, and he knew Saint Christopher was supposed to help travelers in trouble, but he admits he made a lot of promises on the way down. He told me that when he was discharged, he probably should have gone straight to Africa as a missionary.

Instead, he went to work as a pilot for Continental Airlines and had a career spanning over 35 years.

- Marlan Jennings Holland

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Team Piano Man

May 28, 2010 Leave a comment

It all started in the late Summer of 1957.  We were doing daily-double practices preparing for the new football season.  It was hot.  Our locker room was in the basement of McArthur Court on University Street.  We worked-out on the grass fields behind the complex next to Hayward Field.

Classes at the U of O had not yet started.  As I recall, all the players had their own sleeping accommodations on or near campus, but we were served lunch and dinner together in a dining room.  Most nights there were chalk-talks after dinner.  The coaches made sure we had no energy left to do anything but sleep before the next day’s schedule.

My first mistake was making up a song about Jim Linden.  Jim was a tackle and I think the biggest man on the team.  He was also a very nice guy who had just returned from summer break as a newly-wed, bringing his new bride with him.

I made up some silly lyrics and music tying Jim’s marital responsibilities to the rules in our Team Manual & Playbook.  I have long forgetten the exact page, section and item number, but the rule was, “We demand promptness at all times.”

There was an upright piano in our dining room.  One night, some of the players set me up to perform it in front of the whole team and all the coaches.  I sat down, hit a couple of chords, and started off,  “Jim Linden was a tackle, and that is no balony, but he tackled one too many when he tackled matrimony . . . . . .”  I don’t remember where it went after that, but it came off pretty well.  Everybody seemed to get a big kick out of it; even Jim.

I was not even close to Billy Joel’s league, but that was when I became the designated “piano man” for the football team.  If we had some kind of gathering that called for “The Star Spangled Banner”, Cas wanted me to accompany it.  I didn’t read piano sheet music, so I just faked it.  If I got it started in the right key I was O.K.  Otherwise, “Land of the Free” could be really brutal.

My senior season, we played Oklahoma in Norman and Miami down in Florida.  Often, when we were travelling to an away game, I was asked to “entertain the troops” just to relax everybody.  I thought to myself, “How about me?  I’m already nervous enough about what I might have to do on the field.  How am I going to relax if I have to go in there and play and sing without having a chance to practice my music for the last six weeks?”  I didn’t say anything, I just did it.

The Miami game was the final college game I ever played.  It was scheduled as the last game of the season.  It was held in Orange Bowl Stadium and was nationally televised.  The Hurricanes were notorious for being rough and mean.  They were also heavily favored.

During the game, I made a tackle and, as I was getting to my feet, the ballcarrier kicked me right in the mouth with his cleats.  It split the middle of my upper lip clear up to my nose.  It had swelled way up by the time I jogged to the sideline.  The team doctor took a look and decided to just wrap tape all the way around my head to hold the wound together so it wouldn’t split any more.  I put on my helmet and ran back onto the field.

It turned out to be a defensive struggle, and was probably dull to watch by today’s standards.  We lost by 2 points.  After the game, I limped into the locker room and looked in the mirror.  When I got the tape off, my lip was so big, I looked like a parrot. The doc directed me to a table and proceded to sew me up.

A week or so later, when I got the stiches taken out, old doc Guldager said, “I’m really proud of the way that came out.  You know, the light was pretty dim in there and when there’s that much swelling, it’s really hard to match up the lip line.”  I thought to myself, “How interesting.”

As I recall, my last “football team gig” was the annual Football Awards Banquet.  The season was over and there was a big turn-out of Duck Club members, coaches and their families and, of course, all the players.  I had been asked to sing one of my saloon songs.  I chose “One For My Baby and One More For the Road.”

When I was introduced, I walked up into the spotlight and sat down at the grand piano.  After a brief pause for effect, I began with a sort of honky-tonk piano intro and then sang, “It’s quarter to three, there’s no one in the place except you and me . . . .”  It was going well.  The audience was totally silent, which meant I had them listening and getting into it.  Then, I started the bridge.

Suddenly, a singer’s worst nightmare; I forgot the words.  There was no way to make up anything so I stopped.  There was an awkward silence for just a moment, then I looked out into the audience and called out, “John . . . “

McKay got it.  He instantly yelled back, “I can’t help you now.”  The audience broke up laughing.  It was just enough of a distraction so I could ease back into the song and bring it to a respectable close.

While I was walking back to my seat, I decided it was about time for me to submit  my resignation as team piano man.
~   ~   ~

Marlan J. Holland

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Oregon Delts

May 26, 2010 Leave a comment

The 3/4 Standing Back Flip

By marlanholland

In the late-1950′s, I lived in the Delta Tau Delta Fraternity House at 1886 University Street in Eugene, Oregon.  One of the main reasons I pledged Delt was the grand piano in the living room.  I attended the University of Oregon to play football, but I also enjoyed playing the piano and singing.

I was invited in to become a Delt by Chuck Osborne who played fullback ahead of me on the team.  Chuck was fast and strong without an ounce of fat on his body.  He could run 100 yards in just over 10 seconds flat, and he could also do one-arm pull-ups.

One Winter Term, we took a Gymnastics Class together.  He was naturally better at it than me, but at our peak of conditioning and practice we both mastered the standing back flip.

One evening, we were down in the living room with a bunch of guys enjoying our favorite libation of the period, Olympia Beer.  Olympia was brewed in Tumwater, Washingington.  I heard they had a deal with Coors that if Coors didn’t distribute in Oregon, Oly would stay out of Colorado.  Anyway, whether they had a deal or not, that’s the way it was.

I have no memory of what kind of conversation was going on, but old Chuck suddenly took his shoes off, walked into the center of the living room, and proceeded to perform a perfect standing back flip.

The cheers went up and the beers went down.  The brothers were impressed not only that he could do it, but that he had done it in street clothes on the living room floor.  I was just sitting on the piano bench playing a few chords when it occured to me that I ought be be able to duplicate the feat.  With some encouragement and more valor than prudence, I took off my shoes and strode to the launch pad.

I set my legs apart, crouched and took a mightly leap toward the ceiling.  The instant I was airborne, it was clear to me that my tuck wasn’t tight enough to get me over onto my feet.  The next thing I knew my head and hands hit the carpet followed an instant later by one foot then the other.  Clunk, ka-plunk!

There was a moment of silence, then, when I slowly pushed up on my hands and knees, I heard some scattered applause.  It was mostly for the effort, and because I had survived.

I crawled over to and under the piano, where I lay like a punished pup until I regained my senses. It was not one of my finest hours, but fortunately my worst injury was to my pride.

Among the many things I learned from the 3/4 standing back flip was how hard it is to explain a rugburn on your forehead.

Marlan J. Holland

Brothers to the Rescue

By marlanholland

One year we had a live-in cook who was a very nice middle-aged lady with an ample middle-aged body.  A few of us were in the dining room one day when we heard a loud thump from the cook’s room followed by some primal noises of distress.  We scrambled through the kitchen and into her room to find her lying on her back on a cot.  Her eyes were open and she was trying to speak, but she couldn’t get any words out.

Somebody ran and called the Fire Department while a couple of us tried to see if there was anything we could do to help.  She was having trouble breathing and I noticed she was wearing a very tight corset.  It was a moment of truth.  We felt we had to take immediate, drastic action.  The poor woman was gasping for breath but couldn’t move or say anything.

I’ll never forget the wild look in her eyes as a couple of young men loosened her dress and started unfastening her tight corset.  She must have thought she was about to be ravished .

Soon the Firemen arrived and took over.  They were quick and efficient, lifting her on a gurney and rushing her out to the truck and on to the hospital.  We heard later that she was recovering nicely from her stroke and was going to be fine.  However, it should be noted that, at least as long as I was there, she never returned to the shelter.

Music Men

By marlanholland

Meredith Wilson wrote the original story, words and music for the musical, “The Music Man”.  The movie, starring Robert Preston and Shirley Jones was released while I was living in the Delt House.

My pal, Tom Lewis who was a music major, bought the soundtrack on a 33-1/3 RPM record. We listened to it day and night.  We were fascinated by the sounds in the barbershop quartet songs performed by the Buffalo Bills.  We decided to put together our own quartet and sing those songs.  So, we hauled a record-player downstairs and set it up next to the piano.

It was too soon for any sheet music to have been published, so we had to listen to each chord on the record over and over, pick out the notes on the keyboard, then write them down one by one.  It was a major task to pull apart some of those tight harmonies.

Finally we had it all down on paper.  We arranged a medley starting with “How Can There Be Any Sin in Sincere?” and ending with “Lida Rose”.  Tom sang first tenor and I sang second.  I think Ken Durham sang bass but I’m not sure because we had a couple of them.  Bob McCullough was definitely the baritone.  Bob was on the wrestling team and he wrestled in the heavyweight class.  But, he didn’t look like you might expect.  He was about 6’2″ and he didn’t carry an ounce of fat.  He actually looked a lot like Lil’ Abner from the comic strip.  And, he could sing.

That year we entered the Annual All-Campus Quartet Contest and won it.  Tom also directed the Delt chorus in the Spring Sing and we won that, as well.

Tom, Bob and I were all in University Singers.  Every year the choir went on a tour around the state and gave concerts at high schools.  Our conductor, Max Risinger wanted us to put together something more popular for the kids.  So, we teamed up with another music major, Roland Harris who played piano and sang bass.  His nickname was “Deacon” and he was a great musician.

The concerts were quite formal.  The men all wore tuxes and the women wore long black dresses.  At the end of our concert, after all the traditional material, Max would call the four of us to step down from the risers and gather around the grand piano.

As I recall, we sang an old negro spiritual and then finished with our rendition of “She Say Ah Oom Dooby Doom” as recorded by “The Diamonds” which never failed to bring down the house.  When we finished, we were always mobbed on stage by the kids asking for our autographs.  Those were the days!

Marlan J. Holland

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PHS Class of ’54

May 23, 2010 Leave a comment

The Gunman

Our classmate Arlene THOMAS Duke is my closest cousin.  My second closest is her sister Yvonne who was a year behind us.  They both wrote for our weekly paper, “The CHRONICLE”.  Arlene was the Editor.

Our mothers were sisters.  My mom was Lora, their mom was Fleeda.  They grew up in the real “old west”.  Our Grandpa Ancil Bean and Grandma Amanda raised a family of six girls and one boy mostly near Bisbee, Arizona (not far from Tombstone).

My cousins must have inherited some of their mother’s writing skills because Aunt Fleeda wrote accounts of her childhood that make me feel like I was almost there watching.  Her words are posted below in italics to distinguish them from mine.  The story of the gunman is just one of many she put down on paper.

But first, a little background;  Grandpa Ancil moved from Georgia to Devil’s River, Texas with his father and 2 older brothers at the age of eleven.  A year later, his father died and the boys were on their own.  For some time they made a living raising sheep.  Later, he worked for  ranchers as a cowhand and finally saved enough money to attend Dwight L. Moody Bible Institute.  He became a preacher and later was known as the “cowboy evangelist”.

Ancil met Grandma Amanda at a camp meeting in Ozona, Texas, and soon afterward they were married.  To supplement his income as a preacher, he took a job as deputy sheriff in Ozona.  Family lore relates that during that time he arrested and jailed an outlaw who was a known robber and murderer.

In 1902 the Bean family moved to the Chiricahua Mountains of Arizona and settled on Turkey Creek.  It was a few years later, when Aunt Fleeda was just 7 years old, that the story of the gunman took place.  Her brother Henry was near death in a Texas hospital.

THE GUNMAN

“One summer Henry got typhoid fever while he was working for the railroad between Douglas and El Paso.  They took him to a hospital in El Paso.  Papa and mama got Belle and her husband, Elihue to go out to the ranch from Douglas to stay with Lora, Barbara and me while they went to El Paso to stay close to him.  They hadn’t expected him to live.  They both were there until they were told he had a chance to pull through.  They were both very homesick for the ranch and mama said she wanted so much to see us kids.  It was decided that papa would go home and raise some money and then go back to El Paso.

He took Barbara and me back with him.  We had to stay one night on the way at Demming, New Mexico.  He had a friend there who ran a campground.  He bedded Barbara and me down on the ground near the Model T Ford and covered us with a tarpaulin.  He told us not to be afraid that he wouldn’t go far away and he could watch out for us.

He had heard that someone he had known in his younger days was carrying a gun and looking for him.  He went to inquire of his friend about it.  Later I heard him tell mama who it was and he figured the man would show up at the ranch in about 10 days to three weeks.

Henry got better and we went on to our little home in the Sulpher Springs Valley near Turkey Creek.  On the road east of Douglas there were beautiful fields of orange colored poppies.  I have never seen anything like that in Arizona or New Mexico since.  Papa cleaned his guns and he always kept the rifles behind the front door.  One morning the dogs started barking, and we saw a large man riding down our lane with his hand on his gun butt.  He called out, “Ancil Bean!”  Papa saw him coming and he told all of us girls, Thelma was there with my two little nieces, Harriet and Jean, to line up on the front porch and he stood near the door with his hand on his rifle.  He said hello and asked the man what he wanted.  He answered saying he had come to kill papa because he thought he had killed his brother.  Papa said, “No! I didn’t kill him.”  The man who did was then in the Yuma prison but was near death the last time he heard about him.  The man still made a slight move, and papa told him that he might as well kill his family first because if he was killed there would be no way that his family could make it.  They talked a little more and he told papa that if he wasn’t telling the truth he would come back and finish the job.  Then he wheeled his horse, a big sorrel, around and rode fast away leaving the gate to the lane open.  Papa put away his six-shooter after that and just carried his rifle when he rode the pastures after the cattle.”

Aunt Fleeda wrote this story from her memories of when she was a 7-year-old child.  I first read it in 1983.  It still fascinates me.  Actually, I have given a lot of thought to Grandpa’s situation.  It is not a scenario you would likely see in a John Wayne movie; the hero lining up a bunch of little girls in front of an armed man who has come to kill him.

But, we know Grandpa was not a coward.  We also know he had several days to formulate a survival plan.  Just imagine what went through his mind;

- He knew he was not guilty of killing the gunman’s brother.

- He certainly didn’t want to die.

- He was also a religious man who did not want to take a life.

- He felt responsible for the well-being of his family.

- He understood that, by the custom of the time, the gunman was expected to avenge the death of his brother.

What would you have done?  As yet, I still have not come to a decision for myself. 

There certainly is merit in an outcome-based strategy.

The outcome was that nothing happened. Yet, a big problem was resolved. And, life went on.

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Remember When…

There are things; people, places, events, even smells that somehow get stored way back in your mind.  When they accidentally pop up and catch you by surprise, you think, “Wow, that seems like just yesterday.”  Other times, when you dig back to try to remember details, it can keep you awake most of the night.

I’m not ready to start living in the past.  I’m O.K. with the present, and even look forward to the near future, but recently I am enjoying some of the memories of those early days.  We grew up in quite a time and in quite a place.  Remember when . . .

We rolled up the sleeves on our t-shirts

A new pair of Levi’s cost $3.95

They closed Ganesha Pool due to wories about Polio

Friday night football games smelled like cigar and pipe smoke

We could buy really cool stuff at the war surplus store

It got so cold some of us had to stay up all night keeping the smudgepots burning so the fruit on the citrus trees wouldn’t freeze

We still woke up to a clear view of Mount Baldy

We always found a way to sneak into the L.A. County Fair

The Fair exhibited the first color TV we ever saw (A Woody Woodpecker cartoon was on when I saw it)

We could watch “Time for Beany” with Stan Freberg (now 83) and Daws Butler doing hand puppets live on KTLA

We laughed at the news that the University of California was going to build a campus way out in Irvine

The San Bernardino Freeway was already overcrowded when it was completed from L.A. to Pomona

The football team ran the new Hopkins Spread Formation

Your phone number was something like Lycoming 2345

If any of you classmates have memories you’d like to pass on, send them to:
phs1954class@aol.com

I’ll publish them here.  Thanks and best regards to you all,

Marlan

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Good Clean Fun

I’m a California guy.  I was born in L.A. and I grew up in Pomona, about 30 miles east.  I love the sun and the ocean.  When we were kids, we used to drive over to the beach whenever we could.

These were the old days when we could drive through Brea Canyon and down what is now McArthur Boulevard to Newport Beach.  We cruised through the original Diamond-Bar Ranch where the sky was clear and cattle and horses were grazing on the hills.

Our favorite beach was Corona Del Mar, but once in a while we went to Newport or up to Huntington or down to Laguna.  They were all pristine.  Back then it was O.K. to build bonfires on the beach.  If we kept fairly quiet, nobody ever hastled us because we were no threat to anyone.

Sometimes it was so warm we would body surf at night by moonlight in 70-degree water temperature and just towel off and lie down on the sand without a fire.

Then there were grunion runs.  They occured around the time of a full moon when the tide was at its highest.  Grunion are little fish who find it necessary to surf in and lay eggs.  Mainly we used a grunion run as an excuse to go to the beach in the middle of the night.

Grunion invaded the beaches by the thousands.  Some people went down to the water’s edge with buckets and gathered up as many as they could grab.  I don’t know if they ate them or used them for bait to catch bigger fish.  Grabbing handfulls of little fish never appealed to me.

However, I still need the theraputic benefits of salt air at least once a week.  Just to inhale that cool, sweet breeze and gaze out west over the water refreshes the soul.

Home is now on the Central California Coast inland from Morro Bay.  Our stretch of coastline is the southern-most portion of what they call Big Sur.  It runs north along Hiway 1 through Cayucos and San Simion (home of  Hearst Castle), and on north to Carmel and Monterey Bay.

It is one of the most beautiful coastlines in the world.  One problem is that the ocean temperature this far north is too cold to go swimming without a wetsuit even on a hot afternoon.

We are less than 20 minutes away from the water’s edge, and once in a while it can be 100 degrees inland and yet foggy on the coast.  To find out current conditions, we go to www.goodcleanfuncayucos.com and check out the live webcam that shows the surf around the Cayucos Pier.  Next time you’re surfing the internet, visit a real surf shop.  I think you’ll enjoy it.  And, it’s just Good Clean Fun.

Marlan

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Filed under 1. Personal Memories

A Patient Man

May 12, 2010 Leave a comment

My middle name is Jennings.  I was named after my father’s younger brother who died in the first world war.  They said he died from pneumonia somewhere in France.  I had another uncle, Albert, who was the Farm Advisor for Orange County, California in the 1940′s.

I saw him only a few times, at Thanksgiving or Christmas, when he was playing horseshoes and sipping lemonade with the other uncles and older cousins.  Uncle Curtis owned a farm equipment company in Hemet.  My dad was Sammy.  He was a carpenter.

My grandmother had 13 children (one at a time), 5 boys and 8 girls.  I remember that she had a great sense of humor, which is not to say it had anything to do with her motherhood.  I enjoyed her very much.  Grandpa was gone before I was born.

My uncle Rufus was not a big guy like his brothers.  He looked sort of frail and scholarly, which is not to say scholars are frail.  I believe he received a degree in agriculture from U.C. Davis in the early 1900′s.  I was told he taught high school until he started having some mental problems.  They said he thought people (including his mother and my aunt Alena) were trying to poison his food.

Somehow, the law got involved.  Around 1920, he was sent to a mental institution called Patton State Hospital in San Bernardino, California.  I remember going out to visit him when I was in grammar school.

My dad took me in through a guarded gate.  The guards kept an eye on us as we walked in.  It was like a park, with trees, green grass, flowers and benches. Uncle Rufus came out and sat with us on a bench.  I don’t remember anything that was said.

Inside the hospital, they gave the patients shock treatments, various medications of those days, and who knows what else.  My uncle Rufus was confined there for 25 years.

Around the end of World War Two, they let him out.  Somehow, he made it back to the old family homestead which was a couple of hundred acres of rock-covered ground near Hemet.

My dad drove out to see if he was O.K.  He took me along for company.  It was way out in the country and it seemed like it took all day to get there.

There were rocks everywhere and everything was dry.  I was impressed by the big white boulders, some as big as boxcars.  As I remember, we turned down a dirt road and spotted a crude shelter made of some wooden poles with gunny sacks hung over them.  The burlap was fluttering in the hot afternoon wind.

When we got closer, there was uncle Rufus, just resting in the shade.  I didn’t hear what he and my dad talked about, but we left him out there and he seemed happy.  Maybe my dad gave him a few dollars.  It was several years before I rode out to see him again.  The landscape had changed.

The first thing we saw was the windmill. Then we saw the tiny rock house. Then we saw an orchard of green trees in the middle of all that dry ground. Then we saw the reservoir he had built one rock at a time to store water pumped from the well.  He had done it all by himself.  He had transformed that barren, rocky ground into an oasis of beautiful peach trees.

He told us he had named his farm “Lark Haven Knoll”.  He thanked us for visiting and gave us some peaches to take home.

Years later, Uncle Rufus moved back into Pomona to live with Grandma and aunt Alena.  He wasn’t worried about poison any more.  However, he should have been more careful crossing the street.  A car ran into him in a crosswalk and broke his leg.  He diligently did all his physical therapy and in a few months seemed as good as new.

In the early sixties, my wife, Sharon, and I lived with our first child, Lisa, in a little rented house in Eugene, Oregon.  We heard uncle Rufus was taking the Greyhound Bus northward and was hoping to stay with us for a few days.  Of course we made him welcome.

I was working on the late news at a local television station at the time, and I didn’t get home until after midnight during the week.  Usually, we didn’t go right to bed, so we slept in every morning until Lisa wouldn’t let us sleep any more.

Although he went to bed early, uncle Rufus was patient with our schedule. One morning we got up and went to the kitchen looking to see if our guest needed attention.  Outside the kitchen door, resting comfortably in a wooden chair, there he was, eyes closed, an elaborate, elegant web spun by a garden spider spanning from his right ear to the wood siding of the porch.

Uncle Rufus admired Sharon very much.  He confided to us that he was disappointed that he never had a lady of his own.  I don’t think he got much of a chance.

After uncle Rufus caught the bus up to Salem to spend some time with my half-brother Len and his family, we never heard from him again.

Like many California families of the period, my family scattered and lost most of our family ties.  I regret the loss of those relationships.

Think of all the stories that could have been handed down.

Filed under 1. Personal Memories Tagged with , , , ,

Partnerships

May 5, 2010 Leave a comment

Partnerships are risky business.  They only last as long as they make sense to all the partners.  I have learned to keep that in mind nowadays before I sign any kind of contract.

Because, if a partner really wants out, he or she will find a way to do it.  So, don’t ever try to negotiate a deal that favors you so much that your partner(s) is(are) likely to be unhappy some time in the future.

Marriage is a partnership.  It won’t last unless both partners fulfill the expectations of the other over the long term.  I have been blessed by having a uniquely patient and sensitive partner.  You may remember her from my first story entitled “What Goes Around” (available in paperback with a lot of other stories about seniors).

Her name is Sharon.  The brief reference I made to her earlier was grossly inadequate.  She is the former Sharon Anderson, a graduate of South Eugene High School, and Bachelor of Music in Violin Performance from the Univeristy of Oregon.

Sharon was the first Concert Mistress of the Eugene Symphony Orchestra.  She later performed in the Portland Symphony Orchestra, Irvine Symphony, Pacific Symphony and several other orchestras in Southern California.

Since 1991, she has been a member of the San Luis Obispo Symphony.  As if she needed more to keep her occupied, she has always given private violin lessons in her home studio.

Back in college, when she let people know she was thinking of getting married, everyone; family, teachers and friends, tried to talk her out of it. They thought she was nuts not to devote full time to a professional career in music.

I had done a little performing too, but I knew I couldn’t deal with a life where your workday started at 9:00 p.m. and depended primarily on entertaining a bunch people who were out partying.

Plus, I was in love.  And, I just assumed I would someday have children and want to see them in the light of day.  So, I found a local job in a television station and continued to pursue Sharon relentlessly.  I won my prize.

I had a few “handshake partners” doing performing gigs, making radio jingles, producing TV documentaries and selling TV advertising, but my first real business partnership was literally an “over the back fence” deal.  It was after we had moved from Oregon to Southern California in search of more opportunity and sunshine.

The scene was Mission Viejo in Orange County.  One day, our next door neighbor, Bob, called me over to the fence and showed me a little pot with a plant in it.  On close inspection I realized the plant had tiny ears of corn growing on it.  Bob said, “Isn’t that cute? There are a whole lot of different little miniature vegetables.  If you could figure out how to sell them, we could make a fortune!”

That was the beginning of a one-sided partnership called “Small World, Limited”.  I say “one-sided” because all Bob did was plant seeds and water plants.  I, on the other hand, was driving around spending money and a lot of time on little bitty vegetables; purchasing seeds, designing and printing packaging, doing the accounting, calculating margins, writing and placing advertising, etc.  Sharon and I even grew our own little bitty vegetables for photos.

Here is Sharon watering our Small World Garden

The product was a four-color, illustrated dye-cut package containing little packets of seeds for 6 different miniature vegetables; lettuce, tomatoes, peas, carrots, corn and watermelon.  Yes, they were cute (if you like that sort of thing), and they all grew in pots.  So, it was a fairly successful direct mail business, and fun for a while, until it came to spliting the profits.

After I clarified the imbalance with Bob and we re-negotiated the deal, Bob’s wife never spoke to me again.  That was a painfully failed partnership.

Back to my Life Partner.  Sharon was and still is a wonderful mother.  To me, most everything about just being a mother is beyond comprehension.  She gave birth to two healthy children, a girl and a boy.

From 1980 to 1988, after the kids were grown, Sharon spent the month of August each year in Switzerland performing at 5-star hotels with a string quartet.  It was a fun vacation for her, a lonely August for me.  But it was O.K.  It was part of the deal we made when we got married.  We had agreed each of us would follow our own dream wherever it might lead.

Our deal also was that if one of us thought we found a better all-around replacement for the other, we would lay it out on the table, discuss it and come to a decision together. 

When you think about it, there are some subtleties in that deal.  It suggests transparency, honest disclosure.  I believed I was the best all-around guy she could ever find and I worked at it.  She thought I could never find any woman better than her.  She convinced me she was right.

Of course, “all-around” includes children and past memories.  Every year that went by, our life experiences contributed to our common bonds.  Like, “Remember that trip we took with the kids up to . . .?  Wasn’t that a hoot?”  I had figured that the memories would help me over the years.  I’m sure they did.

We were married in 1961.  As of this writing, we still like each other and continue to hang out together.  I am still working hard to convince her she didn’t make a bad decision.

She likes it that I am writing down my memories.

Filed under 1. Personal Memories Tagged with , , , , , ,

Disclaimer

April 29, 2010 Leave a comment

I am not a professional writer, and certainly not an investigative journalist. I don’t have time to do research and document all the details. My personal stories are based upon what I remember, and I write them as accurately as I can.

All similarity to real people is intentional because they all were, and some still are.

- Marlan Jennings Holland

Filed under 1. Personal Memories Tagged with , , , ,

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