Author's note: The review that follows was posted in January 2020. I'm reposting it here in memory of Charlene Imhoff Dividson who passed away December 18, 2023. That's her in the picture below, second from the right--beautiful, talented, and a dear, sweet friend. Rest in peace, Sis.

Remember When…

By C.W. Spooner

“Sly walks in and says, ‘Does anybody sing harmony or are y’all going to sing melody?’”

-          Charlene Imhoff Davidson

That was the In the Beginning moment for a doo-wop group that came to be known as the Viscaynes, six kids from Vallejo, California. “Sly” was Sylvester Stewart, known in his community as a musical prodigy. Guitar, keyboards, horns—was there an instrument he could not play? And there was the voice that could hit the sweet high notes when they were needed.

Frank Arellano and Charlene Imhoff had a group and showed up for talent contests. That’s where they first heard Sly, a classmate, Vallejo High Class of ’61. Frank asked for help to “get our harmonies together,” and Sly said “sure.” The group grew to six members, including Charlie and Verne Gebhardt and Maria “Ria” Boldway. They began to meet in the Gebhardts' rec room, equipped with a piano and encouragement from Charlie and Verne’s parents. Along the way, Mike Stevens joined to play piano. They’d stay in that room for hours.

All that practice paid off and they began to win talent competitions. In the spring of 1961, they auditioned for the Dick Stewart Dance Party, the San Francisco equivalent of Dick Clark’s American Bandstand. They were accepted. The television appearance and talent show wins led to recording sessions in San Francisco where they cut a series of 45-RPM sides, including “Yellow Moon.” That tune became a hit in the Bay Area, reaching number 16 on radio station KYA’s Top 60 chart.

This backstory is meant to call your attention to a reissue of those venerable tracks recorded in 1961. It is titled The Viscaynes & Friends, and it’s available on MP3, CD or vinyl. Amazon delivered my CD a few days ago and I’ve been spinning it ever since. Songs like "You've Forgotten Me," "A Long Time Alone," and "Heavenly Angel" take me back to a simpler, brighter time when absolutely everything was possible. My only complaint is that two of my favorites are missing: “Stop What You’re Doing,” and “I Guess I’ll Be,” both featuring Charlene’s clarion voice. You’ll have to go to YouTube to hear those two.

As we know, Sly went on to fame and fortune as the star of Sly and the Family Stone. But fame and fortune cuts both ways, especially in the music business. Sly has seen some very hard times, but the latest word is that things are a little better. Will there be a happy ending? Let’s hope so.

None of that dims the legacy of the recordings that will live forever with the release of The Viscaynes & Friends. There is a quotation in the liner notes that captures the pure joy of the ride home from a recording session. It could be attributed to any member of the group, because their collective memory is as tightly woven as their harmony:

“We did not come home until five o’clock, six o’clock in the morning, because we recorded all night. Coming home, it was the coolest image ever. I close my eyes and I can see it, all seven of us, in Mike Stevens’s dad’s convertible. We are coming across the Bay Bridge, and the sun is coming up, with the top down, singing to the top of our lungs. It was the coolest thing ever.”

I highly recommend this album. Put it on, close your eyes, feel the wind in your hair, and watch the sunrise over the East Bay hills.

_____

PS: This release of the "Complete Recordings 1961 - 1962" came out later and included Charlene singing lead on "Stop What You're Doing" and "I Guess I'll Be." 

_____

FISH ON!

A real fish story

 

“Look!” Frank shouts. “Straight ahead, where the birds are!” Frank, our fishing boat captain, shoves the throttle to full ahead and we race toward what boat captains call la mancha—the stain—an area the size of a small arena where the deep blue ocean has been churned to a white froth. “Oh man, there are some big tuna breaking water, feeding on the surface.”

I can’t see the tuna but I definitely see the birds circling the area and diving into the water. And then the most amazing sight of all: spinner dolphins flying into the air, turning a half-dozen rotations before falling back to the water. Until this day, I’d never heard of a spinner dolphin, let alone seen one. And yet there they are—one, two, three, and more—shooting into the air like prima ballerinas.

We are twenty-five miles off the west coast of Costa Rica, out of the harbor town of Flamingo. Our party consists of my daughter Cheryl and her husband Bruce, their sons Mason and Collin, my daughter Kim, and me. Cheryl and her family have lived in Tamarindo for more than twenty years and are involved in several business ventures there. Kim lives in Welches, Oregon, with her husband Cliff and extended family. It’s my first visit to Costa Rica, a gift from my five children in honor of my eightieth birthday, and this will be a day I’ll never forget.

Bruce and my grandson Collin are experienced spear fishermen. Captain Frank will try to position the boat out in front of the dolphins and tuna. Then Bruce and Collin will jump into the water with snorkel gear and spear guns and descend about thirty feet below the surface. The dolphins will come racing by, followed closely by a school of yellowfin tuna. The goal is to get a good clean shot at a tuna, after which the speared fish will dive deep, taking with it a line attached to a float. The fish will eventually wear itself out, the float will come to the surface, and the catch hauled in.

We speed along with forty, fifty, a hundred or more dolphins racing alongside the boat. Bruce and Collin are in the bow, ready to go into the water. My grandson Mason is busy capturing as much of the action as possible via his 35 mm camera and his trusty smartphone. He is a skilled photographer, filmmaker and editor, like a young Spielberg. In the meantime, Captain Frank’s deckhand has rigged two fishing poles and cast them to troll behind the boat. Finally, Frank cuts the engine and Bruce and Collin are in the water, dropping below the surface, hoping for a clear shot as the tuna race by.

“Fish on!” Frank shouts. The rod nearest me bends at a ninety-degree angle and the reel sings as the line races out. “Grab that rod, Chuck. Let it run if it’s taking line, otherwise crank hard, reel it in.”

I go to the rod and begin reeling. The fish makes a couple of runs and I keep on cranking. My arm is tiring and I think about giving up, handing the job to someone else. But call it pride or call it machismo, there is no way I can quit. I keep straining to gain line. Suddenly the fish comes into view. I’m winning the battle. Now the deckhand moves in, a heavy glove on his left hand, a long gaff in his right. He grabs the line with his left hand and pulls the fish near the side of the boat. With his right, he makes a quick move with the gaff and jerks the fish up into the boat. It flaps wildly on the deck, blood splattering everywhere. In a matter of minutes, the deckhand has the yellowfin safely in cold storage, surrounded by bags of ice. Our best guess is it weighs about sixty pounds.

Bruce and Collin swim back to the boat disappointed. The drop point must be precise to find the tuna schooling behind the dolphins, and this time the positioning was off. Captain Frank idles as the spearfishermen climb aboard. All the while, the great gathering of fish and sea birds has moved on. The captain guns the engine and off we go, his eyes alternating between his radar screen and the horizon.

            Finding la mancha is a continuing challenge because the fish change direction frequently. We spend most of the day dashing here and there, trying to relocate our prey, successful on at least two more occasions. Late in the day the shout of “fish on” goes up again. This time Cheryl takes the rod and begins reeling. Aided by Collin, she lands our second yellowfin of the day. It’s a little smaller than the first one, but a beauty, nonetheless. Bruce and Collin come up empty, unable to find their prey today, but we have two nice tuna to bring home. 

It’s time to head back to shore and we begin the long journey home. I think about Cheryl and Bruce and the life they’ve built here in Costa Rica. Their entrepreneurial ventures are too numerous to list here, but the current flagship is their property management firm: Stay in Tamarindo. If you have an urge to visit Costa Rica, maybe catch a tuna of your own, or visit a volcanic national park, or catch a perfect wave on your surfboard, Stay in Tamarindo has the ideal vacation rental for you.

            The boat races on, the harbor coming into view. I think about Kim and the beautiful life she and hubby Cliff have built in Welches, Oregon. Kim provided a last-minute surprise, joining me in Los Angeles for the flight to Costa Rica. She will be with us for the first week of my stay and it is a joy to have Kim and Cheryl in one place at the same time. It doesn’t happen often enough. From these two beautiful daughters, I count seven of my twelve grandchildren, plus five great grandchildren, soon to be six.  

            What did I ever do to be so blessed?

***

Back home, Bruce goes to work immediately to clean and filet the fish. Collin and Mason jump in to make it a team effort. As Bruce carves off the filets, Collin trims and cuts them into thick steaks while Mason packs and seals them in freezer bags. Cheryl and Kim join the team, preparing rice, green salad, and other side dishes. My job is to hoist a cold beer and offer encouragement. Later that evening, we sit down to a dinner featuring perfectly seasoned and seared tuna steaks. It isn’t lost on me that these delicious steaks were swimming freely in the deep blue Pacific earlier this same day.

Through all of this teamwork, Mason has been telling us about a documentary series narrated by Sir David Attenborough titled Our Planet. One episode, “The High Seas,” features a segment on spinner dolphins. After dinner, we gather in front of the TV and Mason finds the episode we’re looking for. It is a fascinating explanation of what we witnessed at sea.

It turns out dolphins and yellowfin tuna feed on the same tiny species called lantern fish, a species that thrives because it has no commercial value and is, therefore, not hunted by the fishing fleets of the world. Yellowfin tuna follow the dolphins because dolphins are like cowboys, herding the lantern fish together into a compact school. The Attenborough team’s brilliant underwater photography captures this phenomenon perfectly, the dolphins working to keep the school together, the school of lantern fish looking like a giant balloon, swerving and swirling, held tight by the hard-working cowboys, all the while pushing the school toward the surface. Then, as though someone fired a starter’s pistol, the feast is on. Dolphins and tuna attack the lantern fish in a feeding frenzy, joined by sea birds diving from the air, creating the boil on the surface of the ocean the fishing captains call la mancha.

As for the spinner dolphins, according to Attenborough, they are very rare, found primarily in two locations: off the coast of Costa Rica and around the Hawaiian Islands. I am stunned! On a planet seventy percent covered by water, I spent the day in one of the two places on Earth that spinner dolphins call home.

When Sir David says goodnight, so does our intrepid crew. We’ve been up since four in the morning, a very long day indeed. Still, it takes a while for my mind to calm down and prepare for sleep. Every time I close my eyes, one, two, three, or more spinners go flying into the air, and Captain Frank is shouting, “Fish on!”

 

                                                  Me, Cheryl, Collin, Mason, Bruce, and Kim

_____

 Author's note: My friend, Dillon Mini, would have turned 82 on May 17. Growing up together, we were truly like brothers. 

Remembering Dillon

from Yeah, What Else?

The facts are straight forward: “Dillon James Mini, 73, passed away on Monday (September 15, 2014) after a long illness.” The obituary doesn’t contain a lot of detail, but it doesn’t need to. Not for me. For me, the details are all in my mind, like a shoebox full of old snapshots that you have promised to organize—someday. I am going to open that shoebox now and let them come tumbling out.

Here’s one of Dillon and me walking down the Jennings Street hill, heading who-knows-where, maybe to my house down on Russell Street, or down to the playground at Steffan Manor. It’s summer and Dillon just turned eight, and I’m six, looking forward to my seventh birthday in September. This was the day we swore to each other (probably a pinky swear) that we’d be best friends forever. We kept that vow for a long, long time.

Here’s a picture of his dear parents, Dillon H. and Bernice. I remember the first time I knocked on their front door to ask if Dillon could come out to play. My orthodontist had fitted me with an elaborate headgear contraption that looked like a canvas helmet; it had a metal chin cup attached with rubber bands, and it was designed to pull my jaw back and correct a severe under-bite. Mrs. Mini answered the door and I think she was shocked to see me there, looking like a little alien. Over time, the Minis became second parents to me, and what beautiful people they were. Mrs. Mini was one of the all-time great cooks, at least in my book, and she loved feeding me. And Mr. Mini was always playful and funny, teasing me gently, making me laugh. I’m not sure why, but they liked me and treated me like a son, taking me along wherever they traveled.

Here is a good one. It’s a picture of Bruce Bigelow with Dillon and me on the day Bruce moved into the neighborhood. Dillon and I saw him playing in the yard there on the corner of Buss and Russell, and we went over and introduced ourselves. Bruce was about eight at the time. It was the start of a three-way partnership that would last most of our lifetimes.

This next one is priceless. It is from the sports page of the Times-Herald and it’s our City Championship baseball team – Underweight Division. There’s Dillon with the catchers gear falling off his body, always too big for him; and Bruce, Jerry Warren, Andy Carlson, John O’Neil, Mike Kennedy, and of course, Jake Catado, our GVRD playground leader at Steffan. What a great guy! Jake, if you’re reading this, you should know that we all loved you.

God, what fun that was: hanging out down at Steffan, going out to the ball field to practice, traveling across town to play other schools. We’d pile into Jake’s old Chevy, a dozen of us or more, and sing “99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall,” or “John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt” all the way across town. It was pure fun. No pressure, no expectations, just the love of the game and each other.

Here is a great shot: Dillon, Bruce, and me on Little League opening day, 1952; Dill and Bruce wearing their Steffen’s Sport Shop uniforms and me with Ed Case’s Minit Men across my chest. It was the first Little League in Vallejo and we were part of a group of sixty kids that got it started. It was an experience none of us—Dillon, Bruce, Jerry, Roger Ashlock, Frank Bodie, Eddie Hewitt, Joey Butler, Tom Case, Al Manfredi, Jim Eaton—I could go on and on—will ever forget. In fact, we still rehash the old play-by-plays when we get together.

This next picture makes me smile. There we are on somebody’s lawn, surrounding a big, handsome collie named King. King belonged to Gary and Lennie Price and he had some sort of tumor that had to be removed. So, we went out mowing lawns to raise money for the vet. Someone called the Times-Herald and we wound up on the front page. Several readers offered to pay for King’s surgery, so we didn’t have to mow many lawns. Was the lawn mowing Dillon’s idea? Or was it Roger’s?

Later that summer, we all took a hike out to Blue Rock Springs, then up over the hills to the old, abandoned mercury mines to go exploring. Gary fell down a mine shaft. He was lucky to survive. We never went hiking out there again.

This next one is a classic: Dillon in his football uniform at Hogan Junior High. Yeah, football. You see, Dillon was always small for his age. As an adult, he was maybe 5’6”, 120 pounds. But in the ninth grade, he still had some growing to do. All of his young life, people would tell him “…you’re too small to do that.” Whether it was baseball, football, bowling—it didn’t matter. So naturally he set out to prove them all wrong.

I remember going out to watch the team practice on the Hogan field. Bill McGrath was a tenth grader, the star of the team, and he was built like a tank. Coach Pelligrini was running a drill where there were two lines about ten yards apart: ball carriers and tacklers. When you came to the front of the line, he’d toss the ball to the ball carrier who would take off running. The tackler’s job was to bring him down. They had to stay in a narrow lane marked by two blocking dummies. It was bound to happen sooner or later, and sure enough, Bill and Dillon wound up facing each other, Bill the ball carrier, Dillon the tackler. They went at each other and Dillon hit Bill hard, just above the kneecaps. Of course, he just bounced off and Bill ran on through, but everybody who witnessed it came away with great respect for Dillon Mini. He had more guts than anyone out there.

Here’s a picture of Dillon as student body president at Hogan in the tenth grade. He wrote a column for the school newspaper titled “Pres Sez.” If you had asked me then (1957), I would have predicted that Dill would have a career in politics. Prominent family name. Good looking guy. Intelligent. Great personality. He was a natural.

Here’s another good one. It’s our bowling team down at Miracle Bowl on Tennessee Street. We were all in high school at the time. Miracle Bowl sponsored us and the idea was that we’d travel around and bowl junior teams from other towns. There’s Dillon, Bruce, me, and Buddy Whisenhunt. Buddy was a lefty and a terrific bowler. Bruce and I were just okay. The traveling team idea never jelled, but we had fun while it lasted. Dillon would go on to become one of the best bowlers in Vallejo. He had several three-game series in the 800s and his press clippings could fill a scrapbook.

Oh my, here’s a stack of photos from Tahoe. In the early fifties, the Minis bought a cabin near the South Tahoe Y. They would always spend the last two weeks before Labor Day at the cabin, and they’d invite me to join them. I treasure the memory of those summer days. Here we are trout fishing on the Upper Truckee River; playing miniature golf down by Bijou; exploring the woods behind the cabin; playing hours and hours of ping pong in the garage; and hanging out on the beach at Camp Richardson. And here are the Silveiras who eventually built a place up there: Manuel & Mildred, plus Marie, Mike, and Marty. What a great family, and what a dear friend Marie was. And here are Mr. and Mrs. Bradley with Jerry and Russ. We had a lot of fun with the Bradley boys.

One time Jerry Bradley Sr. checked us all into the movie theater at Harrah’s. We were supposed to stay there until an adult checked us out. The movie stunk so we snuck out and hit the streets of Stateline—me, Dillon, Jerry, and Russ. (I think Marie was babysitting for Mike and Marty.) It was all cool until one of us decided to drop a quarter in a slot machine just inside the door of Harrah’s. We got busted and they paged Mr. Bradley to tell him his kids were loose on the street. With firm conviction he said, “They are not! I put ‘em in the movie myself.” We caught a lot of flak over that one.

There are about a thousand pictures from Tahoe in my memory bank. We’ll have to look at all of them someday.

This next shot is a beauty. It is a picture of Dillon as a member of a wedding party. He looks great in the white dinner jacket and the black tux pants. What a handsome guy! Our friend Charlie Gebhardt sang at that wedding. I remember he muffed the first verse of “The Lord’s Prayer” and had to start over. Dillon cracked up laughing. Charlie made it through on the second try without a hitch.

Here is a picture of Dillon putting out a For Sale sign in front of my mom’s house in 1975. We had to move her into an assisted living facility and Dillon handled the sale. He was in the real estate business for a number of years, though I couldn’t tell you exactly how many.

This next one hurts. It’s a picture of Dill and me sitting on a couple of bar stools down at Teeters, a joint near Georgia Street and the freeway. The place eventually changed names but we kept our same old stools. Whenever I would drive through Vallejo, usually on the way to The City, I’d stop at Teeters to see Dillon. Nine times out of ten he was there. We would throw back a few tall cold ones and rehash all the good old times.

How stupid of me! Why didn’t I jerk him off that stool and drag him out of there? Would it have made a difference? Would it have changed anything in the later part of his life? I guess I’ll never know. As my sons would say, “That’s on you, Dad. You’ll have to wear that one.”

The next picture is bitter-sweet. A bunch of us got together to visit Dillon in the group home where he spent his days before he moved into hospice care. I think it was 2011. There we are: Jerry Warren, Roger Ashlock, Russ Sturgeon, Gordie Maki, Sargent Johnson, Dave Plump, and me. We took him to the Sardine Can for lunch. I think he really enjoyed getting out with the guys. He was able to walk, slowly, with a walker, and he smiled and laughed and conversed with all of us, at least a little. I hope it was a good day for him.

Here are a few pictures I’d like to erase. On my last visits with him, he was barely able to walk, and our conversations consisted of his one-word responses to my questions. It was just a matter of time.

Ah, now this last picture is real. It’s not just in my mind. It shows Dillon bowling, at the foul line delivering the ball, rolling what I’m sure was a sledgehammer shot to the 1-3 pocket. Yes, I know the photo is old and battered, but I want you to see it through my eyes. Look at the form. Look at the concentration. You can almost feel the fire in his belly. He was some competitor, my friend Dillon. And there he is at the very top of his game.

This is the way I will remember him. He was beautiful. Wasn’t he?

_____

 

The Rites of Spring

 from Yeah, What Else?

 

 “I got the best shit in town. Nobody’s got shit like I got shit. I tell you, it’s the best shit in town.”

He was a wiry little man with a thick salt-and-pepper moustache and he wore bib overalls and a railroad cap. He spoke with a heavy accent, which my mom identified as German. His dump truck looked like it was built by hand on a very old Ford chassis. The mechanism that lifted the bed was a jerry-rigged cog and chain contraption that he cranked by hand, and the sides of the bed were made of two-by-fours and plywood. Onto this strange looking rig, he could load ten yards of steer manure, which he delivered to our house on Russell Street every spring.

The delivery generally took place on a weekday when my dad was at work, so my mom took care of having the load dumped in our driveway and paying the man for his goods. Mom loved to tell the story and I always thought she was exaggerating. That is until I witnessed it several times when I was home on spring break. That gentleman really could go on a five-minute rant about “…the best shit in town.”

My dad’s vegetable garden was his pride and joy. He was an Arkansas farm boy and I suspect that gardening put him in touch with his roots. We had a narrow strip of grass that ran along the back of the house, ten feet wide at the most, then the rest of the yard—maybe fifty by sixty feet—was given over to vegetables. Dad raised several varieties of lettuce, squash, and beans. There were root crops like carrots, radishes, and turnips. He also raised Swiss chard which was one of my favorites. But without question, he poured the greatest measure of his love and labor into his prized sweet corn.

Dad favored a hybrid variety of corn called Golden Bantam. Over the years, he experimented with others, but always came back to that one variety. He would plant a couple of long rows, let it get well up out of the ground—maybe six or eight inches—then plant another couple of rows, and so on. The happy outcome was that we’d have sweet corn ripening and ready for the table all summer long. It was the staple of our summer diet: whatever else was going on the table, it would land there next to the sweet corn.

I have to admit this turned me into a sweet corn snob. My dad taught me that when corn is picked, the sugar in the kernels begins to convert into starch. If it sits around for a while, that wonderful sweetness is lost, and all the butter and salt in the world will not make up for it. I rarely buy corn at the supermarket because I know it just won’t measure up.

So, the wiry little German man would deliver ten yards of steer manure to our driveway and that weekend, my dad would begin the process of carting it back to his garden plot, one wheelbarrow load at a time. He’d spread it out over the fallow ground and then begin digging it into the soil by hand, a process that would take most of a Saturday or Sunday afternoon. He’d stop every now and then for a cold beer, or to scoop up one of our cats and scratch its ears, but he’d always finish the job by sundown. A shovel was the only tool he needed. Dad was past his sixtieth birthday when we finally convinced him to hire someone with a rototiller to do the job.

Why am I telling you all this? Well, it’s almost time to head over to my favorite garden supply store and load the trunk of my Honda with eight or ten bags of steer manure. This I will spread on my four-by-twelve-foot tomato patch and then dig it into the soil with my trusty shovel. It doesn’t take more than an hour or so, but I’ll manage to stop for a couple of beers. And my beloved cat, Sophie, will be hanging around, keeping an eye on the proceedings. Maybe this is all a guy really needs: a piece of God’s good earth, a sturdy shovel, a loyal cat, and a couple of beers chilling in the fridge.

I’ve had good production from several varieties—Early Girl, Better Boy, Sweet 100, to name a few—but my all-time champ is the Lemon Boy, a nice big yellow tomato. Good old Lemon Boy just seems to love my little piece of ground.

Here’s a little bit of irony: for all my dad’s expertise and hard work, he could never grow a decent tomato. Maybe he just overwhelmed them with care. They always seemed to turn out with thick white cores and they were virtually tasteless. One summer, our neighbors, the MacLaughlins, drove to Oklahoma to visit family. They planted some tomatoes before they left and told my dad that if he watered them, he was welcome to whatever fruit developed. These poor neglected plants—unstaked, untended, unloved—produced the biggest and best tasting tomatoes ever grown in Vallejo.

My dad swore he’d never plant another vine, which leads me to wonder if he would have admired my tomatoes as much as I admired his corn. It’s something to ponder.

At any rate, in a week or so I’ll make my annual trek to the garden shop and load the trunk with bags of steer manure. I can’t say it’s the best shit in town, but my Lemon Boy sure seems to like it.

_____

 

                                                         Charles Sr., my dad, c. 1940

               _____

 

Weekend Warriors

Excerpt from Bro. Dick … a remembrance

  

I went to a play recently. It was the Sacramento Theater Company’s production of Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men. There was no curtain to raise for the opening scene.  Instead, the houselights dimmed to black, the stage lights came up, and George and Lenny entered stage left.

That’s sort of what it was like for Mom and me when we knew my brother Dick was coming home for the weekend. On Thursday after school, I would go into what wife Barbara calls my Suzy Homemaker routine: vacuuming, dusting, scrubbing the bathroom and mopping floors. Mom would make a long list and head off to the commissary on the shipyard to shop for the weekend. She’d stock the house with fruits and veggies, snacks and drinks, and all the fixings for a special Sunday dinner. By the time Friday evening rolled around, the house was in tip-top shape and the cupboards and fridge filled to overflowing.

My brother would arrive from Sacramento around 7:00 p.m. Mom and I would be sitting in the living room, trying to act nonchalant, but glancing out the window every minute or so to see if he was safely home. Dick would come up the walk and into the house, and then it was like the stage lights coming up: our weekend could begin.

Through the daylight-saving months, he’d drop his bag in his room, grab a cold Hamm’s from the fridge, and we’d go outside to inspect the yard. Landscaping became our ongoing project after our father died. Dad had kept about three quarters of the backyard for his vegetable garden and there was no way Dick and I were going to maintain that tradition. So, we planted grass, which came up thick and green, a tribute to the thousands of yards of steer manure Dad had worked into the soil over the years. We built brick planters around the foundation at the back of the house and filled them with exotic plants from the Vallejo Nursery over on Springs Road. We kept some flowerbeds for annuals and rotated them according to the season. As I said, it was our project.

The purpose of the Friday night inspection was to see how things were going and to map out the work that needed to be done. Saturday was generally devoted to yard work: mowing, trimming, pruning and planting. One favorite thing to do was to cruise over to the nursery and browse through the rows of trees and shrubs and flowers. We tried lots of things that didn’t work out, but it never dimmed our enthusiasm. I have to say we kept the place looking pretty spiffy. And we had pet names for our favorite plants. A fruitless mulberry tree became a mulless fruitberry. We couldn’t remember the name of one of the plants, but the tag on it said, “prune heavily,” so we just called it the prune heavily. You get the picture.

I would go out with my friends on Saturday night, to a movie or bowling or a dance at the High School. Dick occasionally had a date with a girl in town named Laurie. She was very pretty and the family got its hopes up that this would be the girl, but I don’t think it ever went beyond casual dating.

We’d wind up back at the house around midnight and then the fun would begin.  We’d hustle over to a place called Red’s on Solano Avenue to pick up a pizza and then gather around the table in our dining room. My friends Dillon Mini, Bruce Bigelow, and Jim Decious would join us. Mom always had something fresh-baked for us to chase down the pizza. Then we’d clear the table, break out the Tripoli board and launch into a spirited game. Tripoli is a board game that I guess can be described as part poker and part gin rummy. Anyway, the game would rage on until 2:00 or 3:00 a.m.

I’d take a break from the game at times and go into my bedroom, which was right off the dining room. I’d turn on the radio real low and pick up an all-night jazz station out of the Bay Area. But I always left the door open. It gave me a good feeling to see and hear my mom, my brother, and my friends talking and laughing and having a good time, with Dizzy Gillespie or Gerry Mulligan & Chet Baker providing the soundtrack.

A typical Sunday involved going over to the high school courts to play hours and hours of tennis. Usually this was just Dick and Bruce and me, but sometime the other guys would join us. My brother was a good tennis player, gliding around the court with that long stride of his. In fact, we were all pretty evenly matched which made for good competition.

After tennis, we would head home to shower and clean up in time for Sunday dinner. Mom’s specialty was a sirloin tip roast with mashed potatoes, pan gravy, lots of fresh veggies, and chocolate devil’s food cake for dessert. After that we’d collapse in the front room and wait for the Ed Sullivan Show to start.

That was a typical weekend with the Spooners.

            When Ed Sullivan said goodnight, it was time for Dick to pack his car and head back to Sacramento, and time for me head for my desk and make a half-hearted attempt to do the homework I’d been putting off all weekend. As he left the house and went down the walk to his car, it was like the stage lights dimming in the theater. For Mom and me, it wouldn’t be as bright again until the next time he came home.

_____

 A long way back to the top…

 

Excerpt from Bro Dick – a remembrance

 

 

I don’t know precisely when my brother Dick discovered skiing, but I do know where. It was at Strawberry up on Highway 50. I know this because he immediately stuck a picture postcard of Strawberry Lodge in the corner of the mirror in his bedroom, right across from the picture of Teresa Brewer, his ideal woman. I doubt that they still have an operating ski lift at Strawberry, but the lodge with its gables all along the front roofline is still there. It didn’t take long for my brother to figure out that there were far better places to ski, resorts like the old Sierra Ski Ranch and Sugar Bowl, or Alpine Meadows and Heavenly Valley. He was hooked.

We should have saved his first set of skis because they would be considered antiques today. They were made of wood—I think it was hard maple—and the bindings were a lever and cable contraption where the cable wrapped around a deep groove in the heel of your boot. It was amazing that anyone could ski with this equipment and not end up with knee surgery.

As technology progressed, Dick upgraded his equipment and spent all the time he possibly could on the ski slopes. He once told me that when the snow was good, the weather decent, and the crowds small, skiing was the purest form of fun. Experience taught me that he was right.

I had my first taste of skiing on the bunny hill at Heavenly Valley with my friend Dillon Mini. He had tried it a few times and told me that all I had to do was bend my knees, lean forward a little, and try not to fall down. And that’s exactly what I did, zooming from the top of the lift to the bottom in a perfectly straight line. No one said anything about turning.

I’ve never taken a lesson, but when I started tagging along with Dick, he took me aside at the bottom of the hill and gave me a few pointers on some fundamentals, like side stepping, and snowplowing, and how to make basic turns. Then he took me up to the top of the hill and said, “Just follow me and do what I do.” My brother was a smooth, controlled, elegant skier. He made it look easy. It seemed like he was always in control, and I can’t remember him taking a bad fall, though I’m sure it happened. I did my best to keep up with him.

Our favorite place to ski was Heavenly Valley. The hill is so massive and the view from the top of the main lift is breathtaking. We never tried to ski the face, mainly because I wasn’t up for it, but there were numerous trails to take from the top that provided all the challenge we needed. The great thing about Heavenly as far as I was concerned was that you spent most of your time on the hill and less time in line for the lift. It could take a half hour or more to ski all the way down from the top before you had to queue up for the lift.

I have to confess that we got into the habit of doing something that is a no-no. We’d drop down off the groomed ski run and blaze trails down through the trees and the virgin snow. More than once we got ourselves way down into a canyon and had to come sidestepping back up to the main trail. Dangerous stuff, but man was it fun.

We were skiing at Heavenly one very clear cold day and after several runs down the mountain, we went into the warming hut at the top of the main chairlift to thaw out for a few minutes. We ordered cups of steaming hot chocolate and sat down at a table next to a window on the west side of the hut. The afternoon sun was streaming through the window and the chocolate was delicious and before I knew it, I felt my eyes growing heavy. I looked across the table at Dick and he was nodding off too. He grinned at me and motioned toward the door. We finished our chocolate and headed back out to the mountain. If we’d stayed there another five minutes, we’d have been sound asleep. That was nearly fifty years ago, and I can still see my brother sitting across the table from me in that warming hut. It was one of the best days ever.

Dick had a couple of dreams, all wrapped around his love of skiing. The first was to finish his bachelor’s degree and I think he lacked about sixty units to reach that goal. He worked out a plan to attend the University of Utah in Salt Lake City where he could live with our Aunt Teresa and Uncle Dude. Aunt Teresa adored my brother and was excited to have him stay with their family. The skiing tie-in was the magnificent powder snow at resorts nearby such as Alta. For my brother, it was like going to school in paradise. Unfortunately, he could never convince the good folks of Utah that he was a resident, and the out-of-state tuition was a deal breaker. He completed one year at Utah and then returned to California.

The other dream was to have a neat little A-frame ski cabin somewhere in the Sierras. In the mid-sixties, my brother got really close to realizing this one. He bought a lot at a newly developed ski resort called Bear Valley and started pouring over plans and architectural drawings. We even took a late summer trip to Bear Valley to check out the site. Some of Dick’s friends from work came along and we camped at a lake near the resort. On one of the days we were there, we found ourselves standing at the top of what would be the main chair lift and we decided to hike all the way down the hill that would be the primary ski run. As we started down the trail, there was a neat little sign that said, “It’s a long way back to the top.” We just laughed and went on.

If memory serves, it took about a half hour to get to the bottom of the hill, and about two hours to work our way back up. The sign wasn’t kidding. When we got back to the top, Dick popped the trunk of the car and unloaded what he liked to refer to as a skier’s lunch. He had packed salami and crackers and two kinds of cheese. There were grapes and plums and nectarines. There was a cooler filled with ice-cold soft drinks and beer. And, of course, Mom had sent along homemade chocolate chip cookies. I swear food never tasted so good.

Dreams have a way of changing. My brother never did build that cabin and he wound up selling the lot, but it was a sweet dream while it lasted. Our cousin Margie was an accomplished artist and Dick asked her to paint a picture of the Bear Valley ski run from photos he had taken. That oil-on-canvass hung on the wall of his home for many years. I’m sure it’s still around somewhere.

We should have had Margie add that little sign: “It’s a long way back to the top.”

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Remember the Firebirds

The patio table was loaded with chips, dips, salsa, bite-size veggies, and a fresh guacamole that was very special. A large cooler held a variety of beverages on ice. A local pizza parlor was standing by, ready to deliver its finest when halftime rolled around. It was Super Bowl Sunday and a half-dozen friends were gathered to enjoy the spectacle on large, flatscreen television sets, including one outdoors on the patio. Nick Shane sat at the table, an ice-cold lager in hand, enjoying the guacamole and the California sun peeking in and out of puffy clouds.

“Got everything you need, Mr. Shane?” Ted smiled and clapped a hand on Nick’s shoulder.

“I’m good, Ted. You’re a stellar host. Thanks for having me.”

“Hey, mi casa su casa. Know what I mean?” The young man laughed and scooped salsa onto a tortilla chip. “You and Del are always welcome.”

Nick’s son, Del, approached the table. “You okay, pops? Behavin’ yourself over here?”

“Yeah, just sitting here trying to remember a Super Bowl from a long time ago. I think it was 1971. What was that, Super Bowl V?”

“Really? What’s up with that?”

“The pregame hoopla was different back then.” Nick paused to sip his beer. “I remember they played a documentary film, about an hour long. I’m pretty sure it was 1971.”

“Yeah? What was it about?”

“All about the Pottstown Firebirds.”

Del and Ted laughed and glanced at each other. What was Del’s old man conjuring here? Several guys came to the table to fill small plates with snacks and join the conversation. They were all in their forties. Nick was the odd man, having recently celebrated his eightieth birthday.

“Is this a real thing, Dad? Or are you spinning some fiction here?” Del smiled, wondering how many beers his father had downed. Game time was still thirty minutes away.

“Oh, it’s real all right. The Firebirds were a minor league football team in Pottstown, Pennsylvania. They played in—I’m trying to remember—I think it was the Atlantic Coast League. I think that’s right. Can’t remember how many teams, but they were made up of former NFL players, former high school and college kids hoping to move up, and guys who just couldn’t give up the game.”

“Minor league football? Really?”

“Yeah. Anyway, the Firebirds were a colorful bunch of misfits, led by a head coach—can’t remember his name—who didn’t wear sox or underwear. There was a defensive lineman who was a hippy and lived on a commune. Another lineman who was a poet and had a drug problem. And a quarterback who called himself The King. Jimmy ‘The King’ Corcoran.”

“And all of this was in a documentary?”

“Yep. Produced by NFL Films, if I remember correctly. So, the Firebirds were having a great season in 1970, fighting to go undefeated and win a championship. At that time, no pro team at any level had gone undefeated.”

“Need another beer, Mr. Shane?”

“Sure. Thanks, Ted. So, here’s the conflict—The King was almost un-coachable. He was a total narcissist. Had to be the center of attention at all times. And he and the head coach were in a constant battle. The coach wanted a disciplined offense, primarily a strong running game. The King wanted to open it up and pass, pass, pass.”

“But they’re undefeated?”

“Right. I think it was the final regular season game, very close, right down to the last minute. The Firebirds were deep in the other team’s territory, and they just needed to keep the ball on the ground for one more play, then kick a field goal for the win. Coach sent in a running play. The King thought he saw a crack in the defensive alignment. He called an audible at the line of scrimmage and threw a pass. It was intercepted. The Firebirds lost. The undefeated season was gone. Even though they went on to the championship game and won, they finished the season with one loss.”

“Wow! How did the coach take it?”

“He went nuts. It was his chance for immortality. The first undefeated season ever in pro football, even if it was minor league. He benched The King for the championship game. They won with a backup quarterback. I think I remember the coach’s name. It was DeFillipo. Don or Dave DeFillipo.”

“Dad, are you sure this isn’t some dream? You know you need to lay off the spicy food.”

“Yes, I’m sure. The NFL should replay the damn thing. It was a great film. But don’t take my word for it. Remember what Casey Stengel used to say…”

“Oh boy. Casey Stengel? And what did Casey say?”

“He liked to say, ‘You could look it up.’”

“Okay, Dad, we’ll ask Siri. I think I’m switching you to water.”

It was time for the coin flip, followed by kick off. The group started to move inside, fresh drinks in hand, excited for the start of the game. Super Bowl Sunday. Almost a national holiday, even in Pottstown, PA.

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