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On the Fritz - Observations of Modern Life

Thalia's picks

Thalia is trying to decide what she would like to see first when she goes to Disneyland.

Love is...

a puppy's tongue.

New Addition

Meet Jacqueline, a pure bred Chihuahua we brought home this past weekend. She is a whopping 1.70 pounds of fun and frolick, and has quickly found her way into our hearts, and those of our other pets. Her favorite things to do are eat, sleep, and jetting across the floor at mach two She fears nothing and no one. She chases cats and dogs that are easily ten times her weight, and people who are… well, who are just way bigger than she is.

Here she is with the non-living beanie babies. She stole these two toys from Angel, our Maltese, and then chased him out of his bed.

There is something to be said about a dog that is smaller than a remote control.

The Quest

Writing about my grandfather the other day reminded me of another fond memory of my childhood. In August 1969 The Haunted Mansion at Disneyland opened, and being that the two things I dug the most in those days were ghosts and Disneyland, there was little else that could have excited me more.

In early 1970, there was a special on The Wonderful World of Disney with Kurt Russell, The Osmond Brothers, and E.J. Peaker in which actual footage of the interior of the Haunted Mansion was featured, and all through the show I could barely contain my enthusiasm. When it ended, I begged my parents to take us to Disneyland the next weekend so that we could see it. My father squashed the idea with cold hard facts; it cost him fifty dollars to take his family of five for a day at Disneyland, and he wouldn’t be able to afford that kind of dough until the next summer.

As any ten year-old child will tell you, a few months is equivalent to “forever”, especially when that child is waiting for his birthday, Christmas, or a trip to Disneyland. I was no different, and I was sure I would never get to see the ghosts waiting for me in the spooky old house I had seen at Disneyland since I was six.

I am not sure when I first discovered that Disney released the Haunted Mansion album, but I was once again overcome with joy when I did learn of it. In my little ten year-old mind I relished the idea that I could buy the album, and then enjoy the ride over and over whenever I felt like it. Sure, it wasn’t the same as going to Disneyland, but hey, a 33 1/3 vinyl simulation was as good as a DVD in those days, and so I promptly got on the phone, and dialed up every record store I could find in the yellow pages. I called each store and asked the same question:

“Hi, do you guys have the ‘Story and Song of the Haunted Mansion’ record?”

“The what?”

“The ‘Story and Song of the Haunted Mansion’.”

“Is that a record?”

“Yes.”

“What kind of record is it?”

“It’s like a story about the new ride at Disneyland.”

“Oh yeah, I heard of that ride. They made a record out of it?”

“Yeah, do you have it?”

“Lemme look…. No we ain’t got it. Do you want to order one?”

“No, that’s OK, thanks anyway.”

I had that conversation about a half dozen times with every record store within a thirty-mile radius of where we lived. Then I had it another half dozen times with every department store in the same area. To my dismay, not one store carried the record.

I couldn’t believe it. How could there not be at least one copy in the entire town? I was feeling defeated. Then my mother told me that my grandparents had invited me to go for a visit at their house in Azusa. My parents knew how important it was to me to find that album, and I suspect now, with an older and clearer mind, that the trip to grandmas that weekend was a conspiracy hatched by them and my grandparents to help me get the album so I would finally shut up about it. I think this because after my folks dropped me off my grandmother quickly got a phonebook, flipped to the record store section of the yellow pages, and showed me the store she felt most likely carried “kid’s records.” I never got the chance to ask her, but I bet she already called around until she found a copy.

I called the store she suggested, and asked my rehearsed question. The guy on the other end told me to wait while he checked. After what seemed like hours, he came back and said, “Yeah, we have one copy. You want I should hold it for ya?” “YES.” I squealed. “We will be there right away! My name is Jeff, PLEASE don’t sell it to anyone else!” “Don’t worry, kid. It will be here when you get here.”

I was elated. I told my grandmother that they had just one copy left, and that we needed to go right away before he sold it out from under me. My grandmother obliged. She and my grandfather went to the store with me, and sure enough, there it was. I gave the man my eight dollars, and he gave me my precious album. We drove straight back to my grandparent’s home.

My grandfather had a high end, Hi-Fidelity phonograph, and he allowed me to play my new treasure for the first time on it. I can still relive that afternoon in my mind. It was a hot day, and there were a pair of old metal fans humming hypnotically in the background. My grandmother drew the shades of the big picture window that faced the backyard, and closed the door between the well-lit kitchen and the entry way so that the living room where the hi-fi was would be as dark as possible. My grandfather carefully placed my album on the turntable, and we all listened to the album for the very first time. My grandfather sat in his chair and smoked his pipe, and my grandmother sat in her chair eating one of the banana splits she made for us. I sat on the floor with my banana split in front of the speakers, lost in the story I waited so long to hear. It was wonderful. When it ended, my grandmother gave me her portable phonograph, and I went in the spare room and listened to it again, and then again.

Since that day every time I listened to that record I remember that afternoon with my grandparents, listening to my record, eating my banana split, and building a memory that has lasted a lifetime.

Old Grand-dad

This is a photograph of my grandfather on my mother’s side taken in either 1969 or 1970. The date written on the border in my grandmother’s handwriting is "6/69 or 70", so I will never know for sure. It was taken at my grandparent’s house on Old Mill road in Azusa, California, and just looking at it fills my head with memories of when I would go visit them.

It’s funny how the first memory that hits me is the smell of that house. It was sort of an acrid, yet pleasant mix of tobacco, old books, and my grandmother’s perfume. The memory of that scent isn’t exactly a memory though; I guess it’s more like a permanent impression because it becomes real when I look at pictures of them or their house like this one. In other words, I can actually sense that smell in my brain.

They moved away from Azusa in 1972 to a house not too far from where I live now. When I was in high school, once a week or so I would walk up to my grandparent’s house, and help my grandfather mow his yard. He had one of those old-fashioned power mowers that you could ride. It had a large metal clippings catcher in the front and it was my job to empty the damn thing into the trash when it got full. That, unfortunately, was about as intimate as our relationship ever got.

He was a great guy, though. He was actually my favorite grandparent even though he and I probably never spoke more than three complete sentences to each other in the eighteen years I knew him. He was from a different time where children were seen and not heard, and I was a child almost right up until his death, at least I’m sure I was in his eyes anyway. But that didn’t stop me from listening to the stories that he told my father after I got old enough to finally appreciate them.

My dad genuinely liked my mom’s dad, and would sit and talk with him whenever we all got together. Before I realized that the people closest to me in my childhood, such as aunts, uncles, grandparents, and even my parents, would be the first lost in my life, I ignored the conversations between my grandfather and my dad. It wasn’t until maybe two years before my grandfather died that I started listening with earnest to what he had to say about his life. I regret not having done so earlier.

I’m not real sure why I am posting this picture save for the fact that I really enjoy looking at it, and that I respect and love my grandfather so much that I think he should have his photo on the web even though he didn’t live long enough to find out even what the web is. He had his first heart attack just before Thanksgiving in 1977. He stopped smoking for a while after that, but in 1979 he had another heart attack, and this time it was fatal. He was 78 years old.

Monster Frog

In one of my earlier posts I told the tale of how my brother and I started our stamp collections by visiting the old town dumps at the banks of the local river bottom. Many of my childhood memories involve the river bottom and the things we found there, including the Monster Frog episode.

The 101 freeway crosses over the Santa Clara River bottom not far from the house where we grew up. Its importance as part of the trek we made down the river cannot be minimized as it was sort of a combination clubhouse/resting area where we would sit in the shade of the bridge and eat our sandwiches, and then hunt for the indigenous Stickleback fish, and water snakes.

This particular trip we were looking specifically for water snakes, and my brother had taught me how to find them. The process was simple, gently kick a patch of moss and wait for the snake to come out. After showing me what to do, my brother wandered off looking for snakes in one place, and I was in another when I found “it”.

I was maybe eight years old, and not real happy about trying to locate snakes with my feet. I guess I knew in the back of my little mind that a water snake had very little chance of chomping through my clod-hoppers, but still I had read a lot of Peanuts comic strips and knew the real danger of Queen Snakes and what they were capable of when it came to little kids. But the fear of being ridiculed by my older brother for being a sissy about the snakes was enough motivation to keep me looking, and so once more I nudged a promising looking patch of moss.

This patch was in a nice little pool of the stream that held the river’s territory during the late spring. The pool itself was probably the size of one of those little plastic wading pools you see at Kmart, and the moss pretty much covered the entire area of it. I walked up to the edge, and pressed my foot gently into a section of moss as far into the pool as my legs could reach. Imagine my surprise when a frisbee-sized portion of the moss literally lifted up a few inches, moved forward, and then settled down again.

I just stood there for a moment trying to process what just happened. I am looking for snakes. I did what I was supposed to in order to find snakes. Whatever that thing was that moved the moss like that was no snake.

I hollered for my brother.

When he arrived my brother of course wanted to know what all the excitement was about. Not wanting to risk my toes, I told him to kick the patch of moss. He did with similar results. Then he looked at me and asked me what I thought it was. I told him that’s why I called him over, so that he could tell me. He prodded it again, and this time a massive clump of moss moved forward, and up onto the sand where we stood. We backed up quickly.

It was my brother who first recognized our new found friend as a frog, but my brain was reluctant to accept this data. I had never even heard of frogs being this size, yet there it was before me, a full 12 plus inches of frog weighing in at probably a good three or four pounds. It was a monster.

From here on the story gets to be rather depressing. We took the frog home in a plastic pickle jug we found, and gave him a new home in an empty plastic trashcan our backyard. We bragged about our find the next Monday at the school bus stop, and soon thereafter the frog turned up missing.

We did a little sleuthing, and discovered that one of the more rotten kids at our bus stop stole the frog. My brother and I snuck out of our house the very night we found out, and attempted to rescue the frog, but it was too late. When we found him he was in a trashcan just like he had been in our backyard, except now he was missing his back legs. He was still alive, and seemed no worse for the wear, but I was just sick about it. My brother told me he would grow his legs back, and so we took him and returned him to the patch of moss where we first found him, but I still felt guilty since it was me who found him in the first place.

Like I said, I was around eight years old when this happened, but it made a profound impact on my young life. I swore then and there I would never steal another healthy animal from nature unless it was in imminent danger, and I had the means to take care of it properly.

10.5

I haven’t watched a miniseries since “North and South”, and I didn’t even watch all of that. Let’s face it, I was never the miniseries kinda guy, I am more of the pointless sitcom sort. But I am a native Californian, and as such I grew up with earthquakes AND disaster movies, so when “10.5”, a miniseries about a mammoth westcoast earthquake, hit last night on CBS I threw caution to the wind and pulled up to the TV to check it out.

I lasted about 10.5 seconds before I went to bed.

Irwin Allen, the undisputed king of disaster films, knew how to work the formula; character development, disaster, characters in stressful and dangerous situations, payoff, roll credits. His films cheesy as they were had excitement, great visual effects, and could even make you believe that a luxury liner could be capsized by a gigantic, cresting wave in the middle of the Atlantic.

The show opens with a bike messenger screaming around the streets of Seattle until he comes to rest in the shadow of the Space Needle. The earthquake hits, and remarkably the biker not only stays on his feet, (for the uninitiated, an 8.0 will knock you off your feet if you are close enough to the epicenter,) but as the 605-foot tower starts to fall, he peddles off in a race to beat the tower before it hits the ground, and squishes him. He loses, and deservedly so.

That is when I went to bed. Therefore my thoughts on this show are not valid since I didn’t choose to sit through the whole affair. I figured with an opening stolen straight out of a "Tom and Jerry" cartoon, the rest had to be pretty bad as well. It just may well have turned out to be the greatest, most important miniseries since Roots, but I kind of doubt it.

Give me a real earthquake and Irwin Allen anytime.