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THREE-LEGGED ROOTS
TRACKER
Jumping Around In Time Again
It isn’t going to be easy to write the Three-Legged-Story which was once the title of my proposed autobiography [Lies Lies Lies A True Story By Chris Wing is the new title]. Why? After 16 years of wanting to, it came to me only a few weeks ago: the Three-Legged-Story cannot be told without including so much else. Everything else. I mean, how could it be fair to tell the Three-Legged-Story without mentioning the strange church; without mentioning more than in passing the neighborhood in which the Three-Legged-Story occurred; without mentioning the friendships that commingled within that story’s time; without mentioning states of mind and knowledge shared by men whose theories made possible the recognition of the ramifications held within Three-Legged-Story. I’d have to mention hundreds of twists and turns that brought me to those days, and I wouldn’t be able to stop it there. [this belongs in the main foreword but I don't know where the book begins yet]
Play Passage Of Time from Tracker Panel on Right
It was 1976. Insert passage of time sound effects. I was living in a shotgun duplex on Collingwood Street in San Francisco’s Castro area which was, though less than now, the gayest of San Francisco’s many gay neighborhoods. The mid-1970s were a turning point in the subculture. Hippies had well begun mainstreaming; quaaludes and other depressants (Angel Dust aka PCP) had become drugs of choice for many of the post-hippies living in the city. Good LSD could still be found, but more and more you had to know your source well—if you couldn’t make the stuff yourself, you’d practically have to be married to your source.[1] Discos were all the rage, and I hated its fashion, its dance steps and the blah-blah. Urban cowboys were also making their presence known, and in SF as I imagine elsewhere, there were cowboy bars—except the music wasn’t country, it was Eagles, Doobies, John Denver, Jackson Browne, et al. I was going to post some typical flannel shirt music but, well, it's easy enough to find elsewhere. I was listening mostly to Rhythm & Blues and Soul during the flannel shirt era.
I ldid own a flannel shirt at this time, but I really had a reason to frequent Cowboy bars, like the Rainbow Cattle Company, etc. Steven Peter Zeiss was my roommate on Collingwood Street. A Philadelphian, he was outgoing and cheerful and matter-of-fact. He had the strong Philly accent that made you feel at home and made me think of the wonderful years I lived “back east” in Boston, Philadelphia and New York. But Steven was also quite serious and not afraid to express his darker side. He shared himself—his thoughts, with everyone. Also living in the flat was Jamie, Steven’s lover of just a short time. A serious fellow, and a rather combative soul who still and all had a natural charm that usually forgave his obnoxiousness. Jamie had lost most of his right leg to a progressive cancer that would gradually claim more and more of that leg. (Oddly enough, Jamie wound up in Austin, Texas, where I’d move to in 1977, though I haven’t seen him in at least ten years.)
1976 was one of those major times of change for me, coming on the heels of what had been an unusual year--1975--when normal things were happening to me. How bizarre! Normal equalled strange divided by normal again.
Entrapment!
At the start of 1975 I resolved to patch things up (again) with my family...and by November I’d accomplished that goal by flying down to Costa Mesa in Southern California for several days...staying at my sister Connie’s house (a block away from the house in which we all were raised), and enjoying the company of everyone. It was our first Thanksgiving together since 1960. It was during this visit that I learned almost first hand (and almost by accident) about the way the Costa Mesa Police Department entrapped homosexuals in the public rest room near the handball courts in Lions Park.
Why go there? I had some time to kill before sister Connie and her husband Terry got home from work, and I chose to kill most of that time lolling on the thick green grass of Costa Mesa's Lions Park.
Here’s how it worked: The rest room walls were sparkling clean...I mean this public toilet was spotless -- except for one piece of graffito on the otherwise pristine tile above the middle of three urinals. “Show hard for blow,” it said. Although I had used the rest room, I didn’t use it as a pretext for cruising. But as I was leaving, a thirty-something man was on his way in.
The park was a convenient place for me to hang out until Connie got home from work. Even though a doll of a guy was slugging away at the handball court, for once I wasn’t even thinking of sex. (Does this idea shock you as much as it does me?) I just found a comfy patch of rich California lawn and soaked it all in: the nice warm day, the family reunion, memories of growing up in this town. And the Boys Club, at one corner of the park, where I played at lapidary and spent hours shuffling through the play pieces of a board game called “Catastrophe.” I never played the game—just studied the cards, each depicting a famous catastrophe on one side and a brief description on the other. It was also at the Boys Club that I learned aircraft identification. Even though the Civil Air Patrol was no longer doing land office business, every boy knew everything about every plane they spotted flying through the then-clear blue sky. Yes, we even got to see one of only eleven Northrop Flying Wings—the craft they dropped the A-bomb from in the 1954 movie, “War of the Worlds.”
Here in the park this day, I felt as though I were floating, aloft on a conveyance that was part surf-raft, part flying carpet...and in spite of having not the greatest growing-up experience, the sad thoughts did not invade the reverie this day, the first truly gentle reflection I’d had about my life during the 1950s in “my home town”; it is hard to believe I could feel so pleasant here today.
Mesa Park was the locale for CM’s grandest and most civic celebration—the annual Fish Fry Parade and Fuchsia Show; and where little league and Chamber of Commerce teams played baseball; where my sister Alaine held reign one year as Fish Fry Queen. And where now, on a gorgeous day like this, I could watch the Costa Mesa Police Department conduct the dirty business of entrapping red-blooded homosexuals who were unabashedly looking for partners and the quenching of desire.
The man who’d passed me as I left the rest room soon left the park, only to reappear, briefly, then depart once more. The comings and goings of that man distracted me form my carpet ride, and now I found myself studying the movements of everyone around me. The healthy lad at the handball court; the rest room man; another man, forty-something, who strolled across the lawn and into the rest room; the rest room man who shortly then followed him inside; the two of them emerging soon—with the rest room man walking behind the fortysomething man who now wore handcuffs on his wrists. No doubt those wrists would fly akimbo when at some future date he would relate this tale of woe with some degree of thankless humor.
In the next half-hour or so, this scene would twice repeat itself, the only changes being different rest room men and different men in cuffs. I’d heard about entrapment tactics before, in other towns; it came as no surprise to see the craft brazenly honed in Costa Mesa. It was obvious that the graffiti above the center urinal was the handiwork of the Costa Mesa Vice Squad, and all the more obvious that such a blatant fabrication would probably entrap only the most naive of men. Just because it was 1975 in some parts of the world doesn’t mean it was 1975 in my home town.
Soon there arose an opportunity for me to play an active role in this drama. A middle-aged man in a grey and tan suit walking right toward me, approaching me, perhaps to check me out before checking on the restroom fare. Or was this man, too a restroom man, hoping [just hoping] that I would follow him in side and show off my show-for-glow calling card. But no, this was a rather plain individual whereas the restroom men were beefy young porkers, fresh out of the Academy—not my physical type but so alluring to oh so many others. As he passed close to me I blurted it out: “There’s a lot of entrapment going on here. I’d watch out if I were you.” He mumbled his thanks and I went on my not-so-merry way,
I wondered what must it be like to be a restroom man for the Costa Mesa Police Department Vice Squad? Would he have to stare at a potential entrapee’s dick until it stiffened up? Would he have to get a boner himself and wait for the poor guy next to him to make some kind of pass? Would the entrapee have to touch the cop, or would all the poor guy have to do is say ‘hi’ or glance downward? It’s impossible for me to believe that such an obvious ruse would catch many aggressively guilty parties. But it’s easy to believe that when the Vice sets out to bust queers, it doesn’t take them long to meet arrest quotas. And in a town as suppressive as Costa Mesa (which is mild compared to thousands of others), the closets must brim with gay men and boys - most of them thinking, “Am I The Only One?”
I didn’t mention that scene to anyone. Thanksgiving reunion continued, unmolested. And besides, there is an unwritten law in our family, that even on ordinary days, serious subjects are simply not to be discussed.
Did I mention that this was our first time Thanksgiving together since 1960? I think the last time we were together at all was in 1962, just before I left home. I’d always felt detached from everyone, so we probably never were really a family at all (this sounds more cruel than it really is or is meant to sound). But although 13 years had gone, as I wandered far from the nest, all seemed now emotionally uneventful and “normal”—we all seemed to be acting as though nothing had ever come between us. It was at this reunion that I met my nephews and in-laws. We had not been together since, and of course it is natural in these days to have the in-law situation now completely changed.
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The only other odd occurrences (beside the unmentioned drama in Mesa Park) were when mom got queasy on our way into a restaurant, and the fact that we could not take a spin in a brother-in-law’s boat because the only available time would be Saturday evening—and that brother-in-law could not miss even one episode of The Mary Tyler Moore Show.
The Family Tree Branches Out
Somewhere in my writings there is a good exploration of the Wing Family Tree. The Cranfield side is missing entirely, and my mother's side is sketchy at best. Why? Because we never discussed any of their histories. I only managed to dig up the Wing stuff because it is a tree that has roots in the earliest days of the American soil. But I'll get to those histories in a chapter so devoted.
Our recent family history is probably not too much stranger than the histories of maybe one-fourth of post-war American families. The broken family would become all the rage as the 1950s rolled on, catch fire in the 60s, and go scorched earth after that.
If I was close to any one family member it is Connie, the proverbial “kid sister.” Six years younger than me, she was the one who seemed to follow me around when I was a teenager. She’d listen at my bedroom door when I was locked in, singing along to my favorite records. Did Connie “look up” to me? If she did it was not because I was a good role model or had any leadership qualities. Maybe she like me because I was different - the stranger in town - and so maybe she could become an odd-ball, too, just by following my empty lead. [4]
It was Connie who would find me after my travels returned me to California in 1969 (a year after one reunion attempt ended in disaster. [see "Drugs Will Kill Me Early%%] It was to Connie that I’d write most of my letters from the far away places I'd roam. And in those letters I would foolishly express every thought that happened to pop into my head - my fantasies, my imaginary world, my traumas, real and imagined and my good fortune, also real and imagined.
When I moved back to San Francisco in 1969, I lived for several months in a Bachelor’s Quarters on Grant Avenue, the first residence on the part of Grant avenue that traversed North Beach—separated from Chinatown’s Grant Avenue by Columbus Street, San Francisco’s “Great White Way.” I found Connie in my room when I came home from a walk. Unable to raise the concierge, she and a friend climbed up through an air shaft and though an open window to my pad. A most daring act, particularly in view of the rules (posted on the outside of the front door) against females entering the building! This daring fete made me very proud of Connie.
I do not mean in the least to slight our family’s inter-relations when I say that Connie is really a “half sister” (how odd to write it out—never done that before), the second child of my mother and step-father’s union (and the “step” part doesn’t make him any less my dad).
Some Assembly Required - Families Untie
In 1949 my “real” father married my step-father’s ex wife. Before that odd turn, two families shared a duplex at Five Corners in Braintree, some 20 miles south of Boston. My family (the Wings) consisted of mom (Bertha Irene), dad (Carelton Wing), brother Sparkie (Carlton Wing, Jr.), myself (Paul Lendall Wing) and sister Alaine Edna. Each of us were born 18 months apart (perfect for the post-war era). In the other family were Cecil William Cranfield, his wife Ruth and their kids Jane, Polly and Peter. I never learned why, but after Cecil married mom and Ruth married dad, instead of keeping all the siblings together, my mother’s first born remained with his father, and none of Ruth’s kids remained with their dad (though Peter would rejoin Cecil years later). Was there some awful secret? I shall never know because I’ll never ask any of the parents about that time, not only because now they are all in their 70s [5] but also because I am extremely (completely) estranged from my “real” dad and his family, and because for 46 of my years, only the first 12 and during sporadic years hence, has the type of serious communication required by this sort of thing been available. When one remains a stranger to one’s family for a very great part of one’s life, one treads ever more softly as the years progress. I would not like it very much if by poking around I became estranged from my family again—certainly not with this much sand in the bottom of the hour glass. After all, it was my strangeness that kept me from experiencing an honest emotional life, and it was quite somewhat my parent’s honest feelings that my strangeness could never really be allowed to intertwine my life too much with theirs. And so I will be grateful to have at long last established some kind of steady rapport with “The California Side” of the family. I’ve promised myself to keep this rapport going now; to not approach too close or be silent too long. Anything less or more would destroy the relationship that love couldn’t build but that a determined will could somewhat achieve.
I forgot to tell you that as soon as the family switch was made (in the winter of ‘49), my sister, mom and step-dad headed out to California; the other bunch would soon set out to Florida. Two sunny oases and two prime locations where the American Dream was taking root every day.
The trip west was memorable because of two things: (1) when Route 66 traversed Amarillo there was snow on the Saguaro Cactus Preposterous, I thought—not in even one Hopalong Cassidy movie had I seen snow; and (2) I explained something to my sister that required intelligence on both our parts (this must surely have been the first time we really spoke to each other—she was 3 and I’d just turned 5). The snow on the cactus really threw me for a loop, and the sight of it probably zapped me into a new level of consciousness. I was completely unprepared to see it and although it did eventually bring me to laughter, I surely must have thought it impossible to have snow draping the same cactus that dotted the landscape I’d seen in some Hopalong Cassidy movies. Soon after recovering from this jolting gem, Alaine and I got into an argument (I started it) about how many doors were on our 1944 Chevrolet Sedan. I insisted there were 4. She said only 2, pointing at two visible doors as we returned to the car after examining the impossible saguaro snow. I told her there were two more doors just like these on the other side of the car.
I was as close to Alaine as I was to all of the family (in other words, we drifted apart). She bailed me out of jail once, and smuggled cigarettes into a reform school I lived at. I teased her a lot because she was smarter than me. Her grades were better, attendance better, she read a lot, she dated, she saved her after-school-job money and bought a little car (a Morgan). She was normal in every respect! I’m sure that I envied her. Envy is one of the Seven Deadly Sins, and I am surely going to hell for having all seven of them on my permanent record. If the reader is unlucky, I shall reveal every one of them here.
Our biggest rift occurred when we were 15 or 16, after being caught red-handed getting soaking drunk very late at night in a teacher’s house no less, very far from ours. Dad came bursting into the party and whisked us home, where I fell into bed and puked my guts out. That was one of about 5 times in my life that I threw up.
Dad was actually very good about the whole mess, but on the bus to school on Monday, I made him out to be a villain . . . something about him slapping Alaine across the face and other such humiliations . . . things that were absolutely false and completely not in his nature. I was punished more for the story than for the drinking. Our falling out lasted a long time. That was the only time I can recall any of my siblings being angry at me.
California Landing
Our first attempt to light in California was in a small, vine-surrounded cottage in the foothills of Laguna Beach and quite removed from the “beach” part of town. Cecil was a milkman, first. Delivering Todd’s milk. I went on his rounds with him a couple of times but remember nothing about it except that I got to ride in a vehicle that had no doors in the driver compartment.
We didn’t stay in Laguna too long . . . jobs were less scarce and housing less dear some 20 miles north, in Costa Mesa where Dad continued delivering Todd’s milk by day and cooking at the Jolly Roger Restaurant on Balboa Island by night. He quit both jobs after landing one at Douglass Aircraft in Long Beach.
This was 1949. We had joined the westward boom, but without expecting golden opportunities.
Our first house in Costa Mesa was a small (tiny) two-bedroom house near the end of Merrill Place. [2]
At least the confusion about Merrill-vs-Lendall place has gotten me to write a tad more stuff about Carl. And now I must also confess that I’m not completely sure what my middle name was—or whether I had two of them at different times or just the one. But I should iterate now that changing my last name back to Wing (on 2/28/78) was in no way meant to disparage my dad’s memory. In my heart, Cecil Cranfield was always my dad. It has become prohibitively expensive to undo a legal name change. It cost me $75.00 in 1978 and I did the paper work and appeared before the judge all by my lonesome. A few years ago checked into undoing it; $300.00 fee; lawyer required.
I liked the house on Merrill Place; the short little street that dead-ended into a small grove of eucalyptus trees. The area behind the house was taken up by a small company that manufactured septic tanks and grave monuments. Behind the eucalyptus grove was a retail lumber company with a big yard full of tree logs taking up most of the open space.
My first recollection of hearing a song, or rather, concentrating on one - aside from Silent Night and Twinkle Twinkle and all that stuff - was in the little office at the log yard. I couldn't see where the music was coming from but now I assume it was a radio parked out of sight. The song was "Don't Let The Stars Get In Your Eyes" by Perry Como. I was gonna add it to the music section in the tracker panel, but I'm too lazy to look for it. I think it'll be better if I avoid torturing the reader/visitor with those things. Oh forget it - I'll just post some random tunes from the pre-Elvis era and you'll understand why most parents of the embryonic Top Forty Era wouldn't let their kids play their 45 rpm singles on mom and dad's hi-fi. I got around that problem in the new house. Dad bought one of those console things: TV, Three-Speed Record Changer, AM/FM Radio and storage. Since 45s had the big hole, you needed individual adaptors or a special spindle. Dad had the spindle but after catching me playing my records on his stereo, he stashed the spindle where not even a searcher of my great skill could find it. So I bought my own from Brown's Appliances.
Mom and Dad had Real Jobs
Karen was born in June of 1950; Connie in September 1951. While mom carried the girls, dad worked at Douglass full time as “an expeditor," which I learned at about age 15 when I asked him what he did for a living. Jeez, was that the first time I cared how the main breadwinner kept a roof over my head? He occasionally went back to the Jolly Roger to earn extra money. His association with the “JR” would later help both me and Alaine get summer jobs there.
After Karen and Connie were old enough to be left with sitters, Mom also went to work at Douglass (this was before “Mcdonnel” came into the picture). Even though war planes were not much in demand, the Korean war helped create a need to expand the surplus left after WWII and build improved versions of same. This was the start of the Eisenhower era, and we were all big players in the Military-Industrial Complex which ol’ Ike so righteously defined. Mom worked as a roller—rolling aluminum sheets to specifications. I never knew exactly what dad did, because “expeditor” was the whole sum of his reply to my 1957 question, “What do you do at work, daddy?”
I did know that because of the acreage of hangars and assembly bays, dad rode a bicycle during some of his day. I like my dad, Cecil. He’s always been the quiet, “grumpy” type, like me. He told me he was an expediter. So am I.
I was prompted to ask him what he did at work when we were all excited about going up to Long Beach to watch the maiden flight of the DC-8 passenger jet—Douglass Aircraft’s immediate response to Boeing’s 727. As the giant plane lifted off, leaving an enormously thick black cloud of exhaust in its wake, dad turned to us and said “It’ll be great once we get all the bugs out.” Typically droll. Sharp. Self-effacing. It was also on this trip that I picked up an ingot of lead and discovered that heavy things can come in small packages. Quite almost like realizing—just in time—that if I were to put my foot in front of a tire on a moving vehicle it would really hurt me bad even if the tire was only full of air. The fact that the vehicle in question was a bus was critical to my coming to this new understanding (at age 12 in Santa Ana).
With mom and dad both working we got to have baby sitters, the most memorable of which was the one we called “Aunt Nel." She was she quite old and massively wrinkled, and she could only speak by holding her finger over a metallic-ended hole at the base of her throat. Aunt Nel was nice. Not so nice was another occasional sitter, Mrs. Gallagher, whose husband owned the septic-tank-and-monument-factory. Mrs. Gallagher used coat hangers on the back of our thighs.
I learned to read at Lindberg Elementary School which was several blocks from Merrill Place and right across the street from Costa Mesa Baptist Church. Black Beauty was the first real book I read, and I read it aloud to mom while she ironed clothes or fixed dinner. I had my first real feeling of empathy-sympathy-understanding-caring when a neighbor lady asked me (I was in 3rd grade) how to spell “tomorrow” because she didn’t know how to spell it, not because she wanted to know if I knew how.
There was a little mom-and-pop store on Newport Boulevard, about 2 blocks from the house. The short cut was through the log yard. This log yard was covered with piles of eucalyptus logs. That little grove must have once been gorgeous instead of only sweet. Many of my trips to the store would wind up with me telling mom that “I lost the change in a log pile.”
Crimes and Punishments
Oh, I’ve gone too far back now. It would be better to skim over the ancient times and get to the business of that 3-legged story. Better for me. Better for you. But while these ancient times are possibly not worth recalling, much less telling you about, to pick and choose would be cheating everyone. We’ll be leaving the ancient times for a while - in awhile - right after the rotting-critter stuff. Maybe.
I don't think I ever learned much from being punished. I'd feel guilty, and go into a kind of dazed shock, but rarely did any punishment stick. It was, like, you know, not a deterrent. Most of my wrongs were petty, like stealing change and lying about it. Jeez, after all, right now we're talking about a 10 year old kid, max. But some threatened to be major, like setting fire to a vacant lot - the same lot that our Cub Scout Troop played around on. Yes, arson was pretty bad, and I was truly terrified when the Captain of the Costa Mesa Fire Department visited Merrill Place. Whatever my punishment was from my parents must have been nothing compared with having a fire truck pull up in front of the house and having a very stern looking fireman come pounding on the door, because I still don't remember the whipping I must have got from dad. If he took his belt off, you were definitely in for it. But Cecil was never emotionally cruel. Whatever bruises I got at his hand were of no eventual consequence. Mom was the mean one. Dad just smacked you one. He was concerned that I wet the bed at least once a week, but mom reacted as if I'd committed a crime.
I’d usually get punished for stuff during otherwise happy moments. I guess I was sociopathic because by the time I got punished, whatever I'd done had long left my memory. Even more frustrating, I’d leave home in the morning properly dressed for school, and arrive back home sans socks, or jacket, or lunch pail. I was a pretty glum looking 4th grader, and not a few of the bigger boys would ruin not a few good days at Lindberg Elementary. One day in particular sticks in my brain: I managed to arrive at school without shoes. The school called mom and that was the beginning of a long week. And one gruesome night I was aroused from my slumber on the back seat of a school bus. It was, like, 8:00, and the bus was the last place that everyone who was looking for me looked.
With my after school friends I’d play ‘fort’ and ‘army.’ I was a one-season cub scout, and a some-season adventurer. One adventure found a trio of us breaking into some kind of surplus warehouse right next door to Mr. Snyder’s house (our 5th grade teacher). It was in Mr. Snyder’s class that I flirted continually with Gladys and Sally. And it was in Mrs. Cain’s 4th grade class the year before that I learned about hopes, dreams and recognition because Mrs. Cain would always notice when I was having a bad day and she’d encourage me to pick myself up and “do better tomorrow” by “hitching my wagon to a star” (whatever that meant). That was her favorite encouragement. In 5th grade I got into plenty of trouble for looking up Gladys’ skirt and for “playing doctor” with Sally in a field of tall grass. By 6th grade I was a wreck. Not only because soon I’d be going to Junior High but because one Susan Overton (some of us meanies called her “Over A. Ton”) was constantly beating up on me and the bigger boys would taunt me with “next year you’ll be going to “Every-Day-Ray” (their nickname for Everett A. Rae Junior High School). I thought for sure I’d be in school seven days a week and completely at the mercy of Susan Over-a-Ton. I just know it was Susan who stole my stamp collection!
Moving On Up
In the summer between elementary and Junior High, we moved across town to a 4-bedroom house at 757 Center Street. The house was new but we didn’t get dial telephones until 1956 (Liberty 8-3244). One of 15 or so ‘tract homes’ set on one short block. This was 1955 and the family now consisted of Mom, Dad, Alaine, Karen, Connie and me, plus Grampa Cranfield, who was from England by way of New England. He came to live with us when we were in the little house. Dad had built an extra room in the back, which grampa and I shared. We had bunk beds.
I liked Grampa Cranfield a lot. William. He was very distinquished looking, always dressed in slacks, jacket, fob and vest when he strolled the neighborhood or walked down to Newport Avenue - our "downtown" which he called "the square." Grampa was a Mason. He had a gold pocket watch with a gold Mason emblem tying the whole effect together. I do not recall him ever being casually dressed.
His sister, Tilly - honest to god I had an Aunt Tillie - came to visit from England. I don't remember one blessed thing about it except when it was time to leave there were many tears and incredible fear. We drove to Los Angeles International Airport in one of the thickest fogs that I can remember. It was harrowing. You had to climb one of those portable stairways to board planes back then, and we were all crying as Tillie made the hike. She was tiny. She wore black. When the propellor motors started to turn over, sparks and flame shot out from them. We were all scared to death. We could see Tillie wave through her window and waited until the plane was out of sight before returning home with grampa and everyone else lucky to be alive.
Grampa was not too welcome in the new house. I had my own bedroom now, which, for the purpose of providing ease-in-venting, also housed the clothes dryer. I do not have a clue where the washer was located. Karen, Connie and Lainey shared a bedroom and Grampa had the room next to mine at the back of the "L" shaped plan.
In fact, if mom had had her way from the start of our move to the new house, the room that Grampa took would have been Karen and Connie's. Soon it would be so.
I knew his days with us were numbered when whispered "drop dead, you old fart" following some confrontation with him, I guess. And it wouldn't be long before mom got her wish.[3] Dad found gramps a small bungalow on Balboa Peninsula where Grampa reluctantly went live, alone, and where, very shortly thereafter, dad would find his father dead of a heart attack.
I was awake early that day. A Sunday. Dad was crying. He told me grampa was dead.
Moving into the Center street house was an adventure for all of us. A step up for mom, a better way of life and more dad-stuff to do for dad. We’d barely gotten settled when I broke my left wrist as a consequence of ringing the doorbell (such a novelty to have one) and roller skating away before anyone could answer. Besides a doorbell, the new house also had a garbage disposal. Luckily, I was in a cast when dad dropped the inaugural watermelon on the kitchen floor, else I would have ground up my hands trying to figure out what the disposal did for a living.
Aside from breaking my arm, the most peculiar thing about moving into the new house was the smell of rotting flesh. A critter had gotten between the walls and the stench stayed with us for weeks.
Hoag Memorial Hospital
There was only one place to go in western Orange County if you were really sick or needed surgery: Hoag Memorial Hospital in Costa Mesa. You can see it in this old postcard aerial shot - hugging the bluffs at the western-most end of our town. You can just see the edge of the bluffs, at the bottom of which is Pacific Coast Highway - US 101.
this image is probably from the mid sixties
There was no such thing, back then, as a "trauma center" per se. Hospital(s) where the charity cases were meant to be served were in Santa Ana or, as best to my recollection, a hospital in Orange, the county seat. This is where the uninsured, the poor, the dispossessed and otherwise unfortunate were supposed to be cared for, either with dignity or from out of guilt. Orange County was and is a very conservative place, politically, and I never could understand why. There is much more about this elsewhere herein.
I remember vividly the sad story of a pregnant Hispanic woman was rushed to Hoag only to be turned away and sent instead to Orange. The woman died enroute to Orange, some 30 miles away. A scandal of conscience raised hackles all over the place, and I believe that the result of all the noise was a defacto warrant that people en extremus should not be turned away simply because they were not covered by insurance or had no way to guarantee payment.
Orange County Hospital
I was a patient at Hoag on three occasions - under nowhere near dire circumstances. First it was the usual tonsillectomy. I still remember eating the ritualistic post-operative serving of Jell-O.
My second visit has completely vanished from my memory. I remember breaking my wrist (the door-bell-ringing episode) but I don't remember going to the hospital. I remember coming home, however, because of something that my mother said to me that reverberated down the century-old chasm of my life. Remember, I had not yet spent a night in the new house because I broke my wrist while playing during the move-in process. So it was with honest enthusiasm and pride that I sat at the dinette in the nook beside the spanking new kitchen. As I looked around to see where the familiar things were placed (cookie jar, toaster) and where the new stuff sat, ready for use, mom looked at me with one of her signature cold expressionless stares-of-disdain-bordering-on-loathing and said something like, "quit casing the place." She was sure that I was some kind of career criminal. She definitely had watched too much Dragnet on TV. But that totally unnecessary slash might just has well have sealed the fate of what the few remaining years that I would live under her roof.. Not only did I resume stealing, but I graduated to shoplifting, running away, and, once, burglarizing a neighbor's house. Call it payback. Call it reaction. Call it stupid. But whatever it was, it was automatic and without forethought.
The third time I stayed at Hoag Memorial was early the next fall. School was just starting. Everett E. Rae Junior High School now loomed in my sights. I believe it was the first or second morning when I pedaled my bike too quickly round a curb, and snapped my upper left arm almost at the shoulder. I don't remember any pain being associated with the broken wrist a year before (probably for reasons I've stated above), but this break really really hurt.
>103109<
PASSAGE
OF TIME
SECTIONS
Jumping Around in Time
Passage of Time
Entrapment
The Family Tree Branches Out
Families Untied
Some Assembly Required
California Landing
Mom and Dad had Real Jobs
Crimes and Punishments
Moving On Up
With Grampa in Tow
Hoag Memorial Hospital
SOUNDS
PASSAGE
OF TIME
1952-1956
COMMERCIAL RADIO
TYPICAL TOP-TEN FARE
The Four Preps
26 Miles
[Song about Catalina Island]
Rosemary Clooney
Mambo Italiano
you might remember this
as featured in the film
Married to the Mob
Perry Como
Hot Diggity
Dog Diggity Boom
The Chordettes
Lollipop
The Ames Brothers
The Naughty Lady
of Shady Lane
[Song about a newborn]
The Four Lads
Standing on the Corner
Watching All The Girls Go By
from
The Most Happy Fella
1952-1956
TWO INSTRUMENTAL
SELECTIONS
Perez Prado Orchestra
Cherry Pink
and
Apple Blossom White
Hugo Winterhalter
and his Orchestra
Canadian Sunset
1956-1958
WHITE BOYS
OPEN THE DOOR
Vaughn Monroe
Black Denim Trousers
and
Motorcycle Boots
[Spoofing the oncoming Rockers]
The Crew Cuts
Sh-Boom
[Cover of the original hit by
The Clovers]
Bill Halley
and the Comets
See You Later Alligator
The Diamonds
Little Darlin'
Danny and the Juniors
At The Hop
CHAPTERS
you are here
THREE-LEGGED ROOTS
[1] See Drugs – Purple Window Pane [pending]
[2] What's my name and where do I live? Until I started writing these chapters, I remembered that street name as “Lendall,” confusing it with the middle name I was given after I left the hospital as a new-born. The first time I sent away for a birth certificate (when I was about 35 years old) the “name” blank indicated “Male Child Wing.” Though I knew my name was Paul Lendall Wing. Lendall Paul Wing was my grampa’s name. After Karen and Connie were born, Cecil adopted Lainey and me, and I became Paul Lester Cranfield. Paul Richard is what I’m using to write this book by. In 1978 I decided for some reason to change my first name from Paul to Chris (“Paul” sounded too much like a “pall”) and for even less of a reason my last name to Wing, although my father Carl Wing meant nothing more to me than an insensitive man who married an even more insensitive woman. Karen was right to say that she was the oldest child of this new family, because she was born of Cecil and Irene's union, not Carleton and Irene's. Alaine and I were step-siblings. Symantics aside, it was wrong to say that Alaine was Cece & Reene's oldest child. I only learned of this rivalry in 2008, over a day-after-thanksgiving-dinner hosted by Karen in Fullerton, California.
[3] I don't mean this passage to necessarily disparage my mother. We have covered a lot of ground in just the year gone by. We celebrated her 90th birthday on July 10, 2009. I'm 65. We've had some nice, easy-to-register confessionals just in the last three months, during and following the 90th birthday celebration in California, where the family reunited after 18 years of being far flung. However, although I will be holding back some of the more dramatic feelings I may have had about her during my life, it would be unfair to myself to disallow her failings, just as it would be to disallow my own.