The Dedalus Log

Such a cozy room,
The windows are illuminated
By the sunshine through them,
Fiery gems for you,
Only for you.

Our house is a very,
Very, very fine house.
With two cats in the yard,
Life used to be so hard,
Now everything is easy
‘Cause of you.
(Our House: Graham Nash – 1970)

I had just finished the 5^th grade at St. Teresa of Avila School in Silver Lake when we moved from the outskirts of metropolitan Los Angeles to Venice, California. The shock of this move didn’t hit me at first. What I remember most about the months leading up to our relocation on the Westside was a sense of eagerness and excitement about buying a house and living in a free standing, single dwelling home. My 4 siblings and I had spent 3 years living on the bottom floor of a tri-level apartment house, perched near the top of a steep hill on Cove Avenue, near Glendale Blvd. We never considered the cramped space or the inconveniences of living on a hill problematic; they were simply realities we accepted. We were children. Besides, there was the bonus of having many other children our age living on the upper floors and in nearby homes. In fact since our apartment house was next to a huge vacant lot that ran alongside of the apartment, and into the back, our home became the mobilization point for communal sports, games, and imaginative play. It was only when my father was offered a position as a photographer for a new studio that was opening in Culver City that we started looking for homes on the other side of town. A ritual developed on Sunday mornings after mass and breakfast. The five children would be shepherded into the car and we would take a drive looking at homes for sale in Culver City, Mar Vista, and Venice. What I noticed right away on these drives was the flat terrain, the lush lawns on front and backyards, and large homes with free standing car garages and spacious, multiple bedrooms. I was entering a new world that made me think of Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz at the moment she realized that she wasn’t in Kansas anymore. Westside homes were nothing like the cramped housing and populated density of Los Angeles and its nearby hilly communities. This area was flat – and there was so much space there!


Looking back now, I think that the excitement and wonderment caused by these home searches anesthetized us from the dislocation and loss that was going to take place when we finally uprooted from the Silver Lake and Echo Park area. We were not only separating permanently from long time friends and schoolmates, but also distancing ourselves from family members living in Boyle Heights and East Los Angeles. Until the advent of the Santa Monica Freeway (Interstate 10) in 1966, we were now a good 45-minute drive away from our grandparents in Lincoln Heights, and aunts and uncles living on the Eastside. The long trip would soon put an end to our practice of regular weekend visits, and we would only get together on holidays and special occasions. When we moved into our “new” house in Venice in the summer of 1959, we were, in effect, separating ourselves from the influence of my father’s Eastside Mexican-American family, and entering a brave new world alone.





Our family home was sold last week. The last vestiges of our family’s 59-year sojourn in Venice (the part that became known as Marina del Rey) ended when the For Sale sign on the front lawn was taken down. Mom and our sister Stela were the last members of the family to reside there, but with our mother’s death in November, the process began to transfer the estate to the Delgado Trust and put it on the real estate market. Mom had stipulated this sale in her will, and we had talked about it before and after the funeral. So I was somewhat surprised at my immediate sentimental reaction on learning that it had in fact been sold. I felt a huge sense of loss and disconnection, as if someone had painted over large swatches of my past. We had lost our home with this sale, and suddenly all the feelings and memories that went along with it seemed to be at risk. Home had been our refuge, the one place we could always return to. Home was family. Home was solidarity. Home was love. And now it was gone – along with our last remaining parent – and I wondered if our past was gone as well. The only beneficial byproduct to this sense of loss was an imperative to remember – to recall those first years in Venice when this house became our home.





In 1959, our “new” corner house on Yale and Berkeley Avenue seemed a magical place. Arthur, 2-year old Eddie, and I had our own spacious bedroom (which would include Alex in 1966), and our own television set. Since the new living room included a built-in television console, the old one went to us because our room had the space. The girls, Stela and Gracie, also had their own bedroom with a window, but ours had a wall-sized picture window to the backyard, with a separate exit to the back. The backyard seemed vast, with a garage, shaded patio and built-in barbeque, and a wide expanse of green grass with an apricot and peach tree. The front lawn was divided by a cement entrance walkway, bookended by two young magnolia trees that would eventually provide great shade from the setting western sunsets. Everything around us was new and wonderful, but soon the reality set in. We were alone in a new land, surrounded by strangers, and the vast spaces we marveled at soon became a menacing divide. Each home on our block was fenced and separate, with its own backyard. There was no communal play area like the vacant lot on Cove. The few neighborhood kids I saw on the block were strangers and they made no early attempts to leave their yards and meet, or get to know us. My three older siblings and I were forced to fall back on the only support and companionship we could count on during that first summer – each other.





That summer gave us our first real experience with solitude, and we felt isolated and bored for the first time I could remember. It was a foreign feeling for my siblings and me, because prior to that summer, neighborhood friends our own ages always surrounded us during the vacation months. For the most part, we had our own friends: Arthur had his, Stela and Gracie had theirs, and I had mine. In those days, bad weather was the only reason we felt compelled to stay at home and play together, otherwise there was a natural ebb and flow of segregated or integrated activities and games with other children in the neighborhood. However, in our strange new surroundings, with no local friends, the prospect of a long, boring summer forced us to explore two novel coping strategies. We learned to appreciate solitary activities, and to band together to explore and play in this brave new world.




We each found some private activities to keep ourselves occupied that summer, but the one we all shared was reading. Although the three of us had library cards, until that summer, using the public library to regularly borrow and read books was an irregular occurrence. When we lived in L.A., our Dad would sometimes drive us to the mammoth Downtown Central Library on Flower Street, where we could check out our own books to read. But we were dependent on him to return them. A closer local branch library on Glendale Blvd was located on our way to and from school, but we rarely felt the need to thoroughly explore or exploit it. At first, reading was a skill we had and practiced in school, but it was not a personal passion – until that summer.






Reading experts now expound on what the four of us discovered that summer – reading anything stimulates the desire to read more. My Uncle Charlie first introduced me to the world of comic books a few years earlier. One Saturday I found him reading a pile of them in his bedroom. The pile was a compilation of old and recent Superman, Batman, and Archie comics collected from all the aunts and uncles still living in our grandparents’ home. It was a forbidden treasure for me, because my mother always refused to let us near them. She was a firm believer that comics were low-level, pulp trash filled with violence and crime, and forbad our buying them. However, try as she might, she couldn’t stop us from reading them in Charlie’s room. I remember spending entire Saturday afternoons in his room, reading as many as I could before returning home. Arthur soon discovered this covert activity and joined me. Eventually Stela discovered Archie and the lesser action-filled comics in this collection and she too joined the reading group. But at that time, we could only read them with our aunts and uncles in our grandparents’ home. The turning point came when we moved to Venice. We began complaining to our mother that there was nothing to do that first summer except watch TV. We were still unfamiliar with the area and dependent on Dad to take us to the library, and he was too busy with his job in the new studio. When my mom held fast to her antagonism toward comics, we appealed to our Dad. To this day I am convinced that he was a comic book reader in his youth, because he quickly caved to our appeal and arranged a compromise with our mom. We would limit our daytime television viewing in exchange for “borrowing” comics from my uncle and aunts, and we promised to learn the pedestrian route to our local branch library so we could check out books on our own. In exchange we promised our mom not to buy comic, and only borrow them from family or friends. My mom reluctantly agreed, hoping that we would outgrow the urge.





However, comics were quickly read, and they left a gnawing hunger to read more. Being dependent on a limited number of them, we quickly found ourselves longing for more material, and realized the need to breakaway from the confines of our street and seek out the local Public Library in the Oakwood part of Venice, as well as searching for community playgrounds. Arthur and I were no strangers to walking long distances and exploring new neighborhoods. We had traveled for miles in the Silver Lake and Echo Park sections of our old neighborhood, seeking out recreational playgrounds and parks. However, on those early excursions to new places our neighborhood friends accompanied us and buoyed our courage and resolve. In Venice, Arthur and I were alone – so we recruited our sisters, Stela and Gracie, as traveling companions and began exploring this new world of Venice.





 I was the oldest in the family, separated by one year from the twins, Arthur and Stela, and four from Gracie. Divorced from our longtime neighborhood friends, we turned to each other for companionship. Once settled in our new home, we would typically start each summer morning at breakfast with the question: “What do you want to do today?” From there we would go back and forth giving ideas and suggestions, finally deciding on one or two activities to do together. We would play board games, sports, or go exploring. Our explorations became an ever-expanding venture, beginning with our immediate block, spreading to the nearby stores around the eastern intersection of Lincoln and Washington Blvd, and the vast enclosed area to the North that we called “Seven Acres” because a For Sale sign on the premises advertised it as such. Near Seven Acres we discovered a private road leading to some small-scale factories on Lincoln Blvd, and a nearby railroad track, which we eventually followed southward, paralleling Oxford Avenue, over a rickety wooden bridge spanning a swampy creek, until it crossed Washington Blvd. This railroad track, with its bridge and swamp, fascinated us for weeks. We would comb the tracks in search of castoff or forgotten treasures, usually only finding rusty railroad spikes. The creek also provided endless days of make-believe games, where we improvised rafts and pretended to be pirates. All of this area, and its miles of abandoned oil fields to the west would eventually be dredged up and developed to become today’s Marina del Rey Harbor. From these beginnings, we soon extended out, walking the three miles along Washington Blvd to the Venice Pier and beach, and searching out the nearby local elementary school with its summer playground, where we could play kickball, sports, games, caroms, and crafts with other children our age. Walking to the Venice Branch Library on California Avenue proved to be the outer limits of our explorations that summer, but it proved too far to become a regular habit. Until we received bicycles the following Christmas, the quickest way to get books was still with the assistance of our father’s car.





If we did not want to walk far to play sports, the four of us implemented our own version of Title 9 at home. With none of our old male playmates around, Arthur and I drafted Stela and Gracie into playing games of volleyball and badminton in the backyard, and softball or wiffle ball in the street. We would use our garage door as a backstop, chalking out bases on the street, and our neighbor’s front lawn across the street serving as our outfield.





When I wanted to be alone, I loved playing with plastic soldiers. They were my standard gift request at Christmas or for my birthday. Not satisfied with the plastic WW II soldiers that my Uncle Charlie gave me, I received a Fort Apache set of plastic Indians and cavalry soldiers, and a Buccaneer set of pirates and English sailors with a plastic galleon. Although I loved playing with these figurines at our home in Los Angeles, they became something of an obsession during my solitary times in Venice. I would devote entire afternoons and evenings playing with these figures in the backyard. My motley crew of soldiers and sailors from different eras and settings formed the armies and navies of countless battles and struggles that summer, fought in the dirt areas around the trees and flower beds of our yards. I created back-stories for individual figures, gave them names and personalities, and put them into a multitude of conflicts in different locales and scenarios that continued for days. If my brother intruded on these epic battles by asking me what I was doing, or could he join me? I barked the reply “nothing” and “no”. This was my solitary domain. The imaginary world I created, peopled with soldiers and sailors, was one I did not wish to explain or share.





Another, even more solitary, activity I discovered that summer was daydreaming. Not the daydreaming of passing thoughts or ideas floating through your mind like clouds, but the conscious daydreaming of targeted imagination. That first summer in Venice I came already filled with the age-appropriate, fictional adventures of the teenagers and characters showcased in Walt Disney’s The Mickey Mouse Club. The Hardy Boys, Spin and Marty, Annette, and the other Mousketeers were pre-teens, just like me, and they had marvelous and exciting adventures and relationships. What I found myself doing that summer, while leaning against a tree or lying on my back on the grass of the backyard, was casting myself as one of these characters in Walt Disney adventures. I imagined myself as one of the Hardy Boys, one of boys of the Triple R Ranch with Spin and Marty, or as Annette’s new love interest in her mini-series. I spent seeming hours in this lost world of my imagination, reworking and expanding scenes from movies and television programs, adding myself into the story or adventure. I became such an expert at this skill, that I could employ it at moments of utter boredom: when I was at mass, pretending to listen to a meaningless sermon by our priest; in a Waiting Room with my mother or father waiting to see a doctor or dentist; or just facing a long summer afternoon with nothing to do.




That first summer in our new house was a magical time, never repeated again. Except perhaps for the weeks prior to our mother’s death, Arthur, Stela, Gracie, and I would never be closer than we were that summer. The following years would see us starting at a new grammar school, making new friends, joining Little League, playing Pop Warner football, and then going on to high school and college. Dad’s work hours became regular and predictable. He spent more time with us – participating in, or watching us perform in sport activities and school events. Despite it small size, and having only one bathroom for a family of eight, this house became our home and our base, and we grew up surrounded by its safety and serenity. It would be the only house that Eddie remembered, and the only one that Alex, who was born in 1966, knew. It was the home that witnessed the active parenting, aging, death, and burial of our father and mother, and now we are orphaned, and it is gone – relegated to memories of our parents and our youth. It was “a very, very, very fine house”.

We can hear the night watchman click his flashlight,
Ask himself if it’s him or them that’s insane.
Louise, she’s all right, she’s just near.
She’s delicate and seems like the mirror.
But she makes it all too concise and too clear
That Johanna’s not here.
The ghost of ‘lectricity howls in the bones of her face
Where these visions of Johanna have now taken my place.
(Visions of Johanna: Bob Dylan – 1966)

About 15 years ago, after a particularly annoying morning presentation at a Principals’ Meeting, JoAnna Kunes and I decided to extend the 10-minute break time to finish our coffee and chat. We were both principals of neighboring middle schools at the time, and we were regular companions at these monthly meetings. Sitting side by side in a hall or auditorium, we could pass notes to each other, make side comments about the speaker or presentation, and occasionally discuss a school issue of special interest. On this occasion we took advantage of the break to fill each other in on family and personal developments. When I told her of an upcoming high school reunion, mentioning that I was still in close contact with three friends from that time, it spurred her to tell me a tale that I have never forgotten.


She said there was one particular boy she befriended in high school, maintaining contact with him through college and even a few years after. During the many years since losing touch with him, she would periodically remember and think about this boy – now man – and wonder how he was doing. What career did he pick? Had he married? Did he have a family? Was he still living in California or had he moved away? These questions and her speculations about him were usually prompted by thoughts of high school, college, and her own youth. She did this for many years, thinking that one day they would inevitably meet again. Then one day, while in a doctor’s office paging through a magazine, she read a story of a tragic and mysterious boating accident that resulted in the death of a young executive and his wife at sea. The doomed mariner was identified as her friend from high school and college. What shocked JoAnna most, she said, was not so much the sad news of two young lives cut short – but the fact that she was only learning of these deaths ten years after they occurred. Up until the moment she read the magazine article, her friend had been real. He had been vibrantly alive, living his life, and dreaming his dreams, in her thoughts, memories, and speculations about him. But it fact, he had ceased to exist long before. Time, distance, and separation had kept him alive only in her imagination, but now he was truly gone, and she felt the loss. This story came back to me a few months ago, when I learned that my old friend JoAnna had died in Scottsdale, Arizona, on November 19.

JoAnna occupies a prominent place in my personal gallery of brilliant women who were guides, mentors, and friends in the Los Angeles School District. I first met her in the Senior High School Division of LAUSD in 1984. She was the “Expulsion Lady” at the time, the administrator in charge of the Student Disciplinary Office for high schools. We had a nodding acquaintance at first that grew with the increasing support and encouragement of my own director, Joyce Peyton, who headed the Priority Staffing Program for high schools. JoAnna and Joyce were colleagues and part of a generation of female high school assistant principals that coalesced into a Movement to confront and challenge the “Old Boys Club” mentality of secondary educational leadership in the District. This male bias had created a self-sustaining, informal mechanism whereby better-qualified female assistant principals, and administrative deans, were systematically blocked from the position of principal in high schools and junior high schools. A Principals’ Meeting at Senior High School Division at that time was made up of a roomful of men, with only one or two women. Yet all the instructional advisers working at the Division realized that the quality instructional programs in high schools were being directed and improved by the leadership of their female assistant principals. I’ve come to believe that these women, in their respective administrative organizations, developed a common understanding to identify, nurture, and promote teachers, advisers, and other sub-administrators who showed instructional leadership and talent, regardless of sex. This unifying mission created an informal “sisterhood” of sorts, aimed at communicating, sharing information, and providing mutual support. A group of these women would eventually sue the District on its promotional practices and win a consent degree that finally opened the door to a large influx of female principals at the junior and senior high school level.



After a year of working in the Senior High School Division as an instructional adviser, Joyce encouraged me to apply for the position of Administrative Dean and go through the District’s promotional process. She also praised and recommended my qualifications and talents to other Division directors, asking for their support of my candidacy. This web of support was instrumental in my selection and assignment to Granada Hills High School as Administrative Dean in 1985. It was on the eve of my leaving the Division that JoAnna assumed her position as professional guide and counselor, a role she maintained for the rest of my career.

JoAnna pulled me aside one afternoon, and for an hour or more briefed me on what to expect and how to best maneuver the mechanisms of leadership and influence at Granada Hills. It remains to this day the most concise, penetrating, and insightful briefing on personnel, school culture, and administrative management I’ve ever received. When she left me, after wishing me luck, I sat in stunned silence for a long time, processing the kindness by this act of unsolicited confidence and support for a person she knew only slightly at the time.


As large as the District is in size, it always allowed people to create smaller communities of friends and colleagues through its regional divisions, administrative organizations, and meetings. In the years that followed my first school assignment, JoAnna’s career and mine often intersected as fellow administrators at high schools, and middle schools. Yet it was as a “Friend of JoAnna (FOJ)” that I made more and more intimate personal and professional connections in the District. If I happened to mention her name to principals or assistant principals who knew her, I was immediately welcomed and trusted. There was an assumption that JoAnna did not suffer fools or incompetents, and if she valued your friendship, you were in a special category that merited trust and confidence. A friend could count on JoAnna for counsel, help, and sympathy. She was the first person I called when I was assigned to my first principalship at El Sereno Middle School in 1992. I called to ask her to be “my person” – the trusted friend and colleague I could always count on for honest and confidential advice and support. Of all the principals I’d served with and known, she was the only one I could depend on for that kind of help and solace.



My best days as principal were at the monthly Principals Meeting where we would sit, side-by-side, listening, joking, sharing stories and achievements, and laughing – laughing over the absurdity of the impossible nature of our jobs. JoAnna loved to laugh and tell stories – usually long ones. On one District-sponsored bus trip to observe middle schools in San Diego, she regaled me with non-stop commentary, stories, and opinions about everything that came to her mind as we traveled there and back – and I listened, spellbound, for the entire two-way journey. We never judged each other – even when we disagreed. Once I matured as a principal, I became more and more cautious over financial and personnel matters, but I secretly envied her boldness. JoAnna was sometimes audacious and cavalier with her “creative accounting” methods and professional courtesies. The education and welfare of her students always came first, but she sometimes bent budgetary rules and guidelines to promote them and provide them with enrichment opportunities. She would also do a favor for a good friend – even if it meant taking a chance on hiring a supposedly weak teacher other principals would avoid. I sometimes shook my head in wonderment at her antics, which she would shamelessly describe to me – but they always worked out, and she ran a great school.

Middle School Principal meetings became flat and colorless affairs after JoAnna retired in 2006. No other colleague could replace her exuberant, animated style and wit during these meetings. With no one to keep me alert and critical of the presentations or reports being made, I pretended interest by writing stories and essays during the meetings, which I eventually posted on my blog. In the ensuing years, I’d hear how she was doing from mutual friends, and on a couple of occasions she surprised me with a visit while doing some District consulting work for John Liechty’s Beyond the Bell After School Program. But those sightings became less and less, and over the years we eventually lost touch.


For awhile, I wished I had never learned of JoAnna’s death, nor read the tender obituary written by her son. I would prefer thinking of her as vibrant and alive, visiting old friends in Palms Springs, or Calpine, California, or playing a piano duet with her son Mike. I could continue believing that our paths would cross again, and she would fill me in on the things she had done, or the trips she had taken. Time and distance would keep her suspended in this state, and I could continue pretending that we would see each other again. Yet I soon realized that by doing so, I ran the risk of feeling that double loss that JoAnna described to me when she related the story of her high school and college friend: his actual death, and then the death of the memories and speculations that had kept him seemingly alive for 10 more. I suppose that was the lesson of her story. Ignorance of a person’s death deludes us for a time, but the loss will be a two-fold pain when the truth is learned. So, I decided on keeping JoAnna present in my memories, my visions of her throughout the years we worked together, and in the stories of the times we laughed and talked together.

Joey “The Lips” Fagan:
“O sing unto the Lord a new song,
For he’s done marvelous things’.
Psalm 98.”
Jimmy Rabbitte:
“You lied to me, Joey!
I always bought everythin’ you told us!
But you lied to me!”
Joey: “In time you’ll realize
What you achieved.”
Jimmy: “I’ve achieved nothing!”
Joey: You’re missing the point!
The success of the band was irrelevant!
You raised their expectations of life!
You lifted their horizons!
Sure, we could have been famous,
But that would have been predictable.
This way it’s poetry”
(The Commitments: 1991 movie)

On Saturday, June 17^th, three colleagues, from another time and place, celebrated their retirement as teachers and administrators from the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD). Privately, I would call them “old friends”, but they are not really THAT OLD, and unfortunately, I rarely see them anymore. They were teachers that I worked with, suffered with, and greatly admired and respected. They were people I liked – all in different ways.





I fell in love with Van Nuys MS from the first day I drove to it in the summer of 1995. After spending 7 years as an Assistant Principal and Principal in the Los Angeles communities of Sun Valley and El Sereno, Van Nuys was like coming home. It was a classically built, pre-WWII structure, with old-fashioned hallways and floors, walls of old wood, and cornices of solid, ancient cement. Best of all for a principal accustomed to the dreary asphalt of inner city playgrounds and P.E. fields, Van Nuys was garlanded with verdant front lawns and trees, lush P.E. fields on the side, and an interior courtyard with two large grass pastures and shady Chinese elm trees. It was a magical emerald isle, tucked a block away from the busy commercial street of Van Nuys Blvd, which our counselor, Marty Crowe, appropriately nicknamed “Shangri-la (and the name I used when referring to the middle school in previous blog essays).





There was never a doubt in my mind about going to this retirement party, when I received the invitation. All three were people I valued and esteemed, and Jim was an exceptionally good friend. Any nervousness about going was relieved when Sue Harris, my assistant principal at Van Nuys, informed me that she was going too. So I invited her to carpool with me, and we went together.





Let me take a moment to add at this point, that my 10 years at Van Nuys covered both the best times I had as a principal and periods of my deepest depression. I suppose I always wanted to maintain the belief that Van Nuys Middle School, my Shangri-la, was timeless and would always stay the same. That even if I were transferred and then retired, the place I loved, and the teachers and staff I cherished, would always be there. The only thing that would change would be the principal, and, as teachers never tired in telling me, “Principals come and go”. So I was jolted out of that dream immediately after my arrival. As I was greeting, hugging, and reminiscing with former colleagues, one after another told me that they and so-and-so were no longer at the school:
“She was transferred”, “he left,” “they were reassigned,” the stories seemed to go.
Prompted by my question as to how things were going, Dorothy, a magnet teacher who was the teacher’s union chapter chair during my time, pulled me aside.
“Tony,” she whispered, “everything is really different now. Since you left we’ve had a string of short-term principals. Many teachers and staff have left on their own or were moved, and loyalties and alliances have shifted”. She shook her head adding, “Things and people have changed. You wouldn’t recognize the school you left.”








As I’ve learned from recent experience, reunions are poor vehicles for satisfactory communication. When surrounded with so many old faces and acquaintances from a treasured time long ago, there is never enough time to talk or explain. There are simply too many people who you want to talk to, and who want to talk to you – all compressed in a limited amount of time. Of the few individuals I managed to speak with for an extended time was Tommy Hicks, a substitute teacher and old friend from Van Nuys and subsequent schools. While it’s unusual to befriend transitory substitute teachers, Tommy was unique. He was an engaging and dynamic, part-time Hollywood and New York actor and director, and the “preferred sub” for us and many other surrounding schools. Teachers loved him and students respected him. What bonded our friendship was his insight in regards to my son, Tony, who had chosen a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Acting as his college major. The topic of my son arose one morning when I was complimenting Tommy’s stubborn commitment to the difficult profession of acting in Los Angeles.
“Tony, Tony, Tony”, he said, smiling and patting me on the shoulder, after I described my son’s longtime involvement in children’s and high school theatre.
“Your son has a passion for acting!  It’s a marvelous thing. You’ve got to trust him and let him pursue his passion. Theatre and the Fine Arts are not dead ends; they can lead to many career opportunities if acting doesn’t pan out. But passion is a gift from the gods.”
I took his advice to heart, especially coming from a joyous man who was still following his own passion, despite its trials and frustrations, and most of his predictions came true. Tony’s BFA degree did eventually evolve into a career in legal editing, and now in computer programming.
But his descriptions of the current situation at Van Nuys MS were disheartening. They were consistent with what I had heard from Dorothy, Rosario, Maria, and many more. Many of the original group of teachers had retired or left for other schools, some were displaced or transferred, and those who remained had redefined themselves in relation to the rapidly changing administrators and principals.






Fortunately, while listening to Tommy’s dolorous tales, I had a chance to pause and reflect, and I tried to gain some perspective on the situation he and others had been describing. I found it hard to believe that my presence at Van Nuys had played such a pivotal role in the formation of the school culture and the school community that thrived from 1995 to 2005. Surely it existed before I arrived and should have continued after I left.
“You know, Tommy,” I sighed, after listening to the discouraging news of the school. “Maybe we’re thinking about those days in the wrong way. Are you familiar with the movie The Commitments? You know, the movie about the formation of an Irish band of working class young people who learn to play Black Soul music. It’s one of my favorites, because of a great dialogue at the end of the movie between the wise old trumpet player and the manager. The old musician explains that ALL truly extraordinary events, like a group of working-class, novice musicians finally coming together to play authentic American black soul music, must come to an end.
‘Happy endings are predictable and boring’, he tells the manager. ‘Wonderful things don’t last forever’. Perhaps that’s what we had at Van Nuys for a while – a uniquely, wonderful thing”.
Even while describing that movie scene to Tommy as a possible explanation of the chimerical period of time we spent together at Van Nuys MS, the dialogue haunted me all afternoon, and I promised myself to find the exact wording later.





All three of the retiring teachers were already members of the Van Nuys Middle School faculty when I arrived in August of 1995. Marlene Hatcher was an English and French teacher, and Keli Koppel and Jim Clemmensen were P.E. Teachers. Jim was also Department Chair and director of a newly awarded State Demonstration Grant in Physical Education. I would eventually appoint him Magnet Coordinator, and he became a valued member of my administrative team. Jim worked in the District for 37 years – 36 of them at Van Nuys. Each of these teachers played a vital role in my decade-long tenure as principal of Van Nuys Middle School, and I appreciated them greatly – especially now, after 12 years have passed. Listening to the old funny and touching stories told by their friends and fellow teachers who spoke and paid tribute to these longtime professionals brought back a flood of memories of my own experiences with them and of my time at Van Nuys.








Marlene was always a puzzle for me. Was she a quirky, Prima Donna, or an efficient, hardnosed teacher who demanded quality effort from her students? Actually, she was both, and ultimately, she was the one master-teacher I wanted my own daughter to observe before going into her first teaching assignment. My key to understanding Marlene was first seeing her through the eyes of the people I trusted and admired at Van Nuys, and later I saw those qualities for myself. Keli was also a unique character that gave off mixed signals – especially to administrators. On the one hand, she seemed to be late, untimely, and unorganized with paperwork, and yet managed her P.E. students like a sophisticated efficiency expert and field general. The idiosyncrasies both these teachers displayed dissolved when they were observed in the classroom, albeit in a building or in the open air. They were leaders with a natural authority they communicated easily to their students, without raising their voices or going into hysterics. I learned that they were best judged by their interactions with students, the standards they set for them, and how they assisted children in achieving them. They were excellent teachers, but they had something more. They were able to communicate a love and confidence in the students’ natural ability to learn. It was this more that made them special, and the school unique.







Jim Clemmensen was able to institutionalize this extra more in the creation of a remarkable educational program that promoted the highest state standards of cutting edge, physical education instruction. With Kurt Kruger, Fernando Gallud, Christine Votrian, Pete Earhardt, and Keli, he molded a team of committed, professional educators who broke the stereotype of P.E. teachers as “coaches” who directed segregated boy and girl classes in calisthenics and then tossed out the balls and equipment to play sports. This P.E. Department, who on two occasions after 1995, was recognized by the California Association for Health, Physical Education, Recreation and Dance (CAHPERD) as the Outstanding Middle School Program in the State of California, was committed to the principal of teaching lifelong health and fitness standards to integrated classes of boy and girls, through benchmarked learning, as demonstrated by student achievement. When observing P.E. classes at Van Nuys, you watched students learning, practicing while having fun, and recording their own achievements so as to be able to explain them later. The goals and methodology of this department, especially when described by Jim and Keli at staff development sessions with the entire faculty present, became the bedrock and model of the instructional program for the entire school. In many ways, the P.E. department led and sustained the school’s drive for excellence at Van Nuys Middle School.







That afternoon, while driving home at the end of the long luncheon, Sue and I compared notes of our conversations and impressions. We both came away with the same conclusion. The school community we had met, known, and in many cases, hired at Van Nuys between 1996 and 2007 no longer existed. All we had of that time were memories and departing friends. The three individuals who retired that day were now part of that fleeting past.






Later, while researching the movie, The Commitments, I realized that although I correctly expressed the spirit of the dialogue to Tommy, I weakened the power and beauty of the scripted words. In rereading the verbal exchange between Joey Fagan and Jimmy Rabbitte at the end of the movie (which I cited in the epigram), I became more convinced that the movie was a fitting metaphor for describing the Van Nuys Middle School experience between 1995 and 2005. As improbable as the idea of a group of struggling novice musicians, made up of working-class Irish men and women, coming together to form a wonderfully harmonious Soul Band; so too was the idea that a second chance principal, transferred from an East L.A. middle school because of friction with teachers and parents, successfully bonding with the teachers, administrators, and parents of a mid-Valley middle school that had caused their last principal to flee after only six months. And yet, the improbable happened, because all the stakeholders there, teachers, administrators, staff, and community, came together, committing themselves to showing that our students could and would learn and achieve. Just as in the movie, the 10-year process was racked with conflict and peace, pain and laughter, and joy and despair, but we never gave up. We kept working at getting better so the students would do better. Van Nuys MS became a LEARN school, went through a demoralizing Red Team Tribunal and Evaluation, began strategically targeting student test scores, and ultimately watched our students produce the highest middle school test gains in the District in 2004 and 2005. For a marvelous moment in time, we became a band of teachers, administrators, students, parents, and staff, and made poetry together.







This essay is dedicated to the poets I worked with at Van Nuys Middle School.



 

Since I am coming to that holy room
Where, with Thy choir of saints for evermore,
I shall be made Thy music; as I come
I tune the instrument here at the door,
And what I must do then, think here before.
(Hymn to God my God, in my Sickness: John Donne – 1630)

I think I first heard of Fr. George Niederauer after a mutual friend introduced Kathy to him around 1993. She took an immediate liking to this engaging priest who demonstrated such a keen wit and a unique “gift of gab”. He was a Monsignor at the time, and co-director of the House of Prayer for Priests in Los Angeles, while in residence at St. Victor’s Church in West Hollywood. I recalled the Saturday morning excursions they took to see him, because Kathy also mentioned that she would walk over to the nearby Book Soup, one of my favorite independent bookstores, to browse around before their meeting. The books she saw or bought often acted as stimulus for many stirring and interesting conversations they had about books, literature, and especially Catholic authors. I naturally became curious about this witty and intelligent man who shifted so effortlessly between spiritual guidance to literary discussions with friends. Those two elements were only a hint to the many aspects that comprised this man of God. Over the next 24 years there seemed to be a new revelation with every meeting.



George died last month. He was 80 years old and had been living at Nazareth House in San Rafael. George was the eighth Archbishop of San Francisco. He was ordained a priest in 1962, received a B.A. in Philosophy from St. John’s Seminary, a degree in Sacred Theology from the Catholic University in Washington, DC, an MA in English Literature from Loyola-Marymount University, and a doctorate in English Literature from USC. During his 55 years as a priest, he did parish work, taught English Literature and served as spiritual director at St. John’s Seminary, was made a Monsignor and appointed Rector there, and then served as co-director of the House of Prayer. In 1994 he was appointed eighth Bishop of the Diocese of Salt Lake City, and served there until his appointment to San Francisco in 2005. I gradually learned of all these impressive titles, positions, and degrees over the years, never seeing them all listed until after his death. To me he was simply George, the valued friend of my wife Kathy. As I got to know him better over the years, he became my friend as well.




 For many years I always thought of George as “The Man Who Came to Dinner”, because we mostly saw him on social occasions that involved meals of some kind. We invited him to our home, or the beach house we rented over summer, or met him for dinner at Taix French Restaurant in Echo Park. He vaguely reminded me of Sheridan Whiteside, the central character in the 1942 movie with the same name. Both men were urbane, quick-thinking intellectuals who made clever remarks, biting retorts, and amusing comparisons. They were gifted raconteurs who could startle you with a funny or quirky story, or challenge you with humorous witticisms. Only while Sheridan was sarcastic and snarky, George was always kind, gentle, and compassionate. The other aspect of George that I found most endearing was despite the titles, and the power and authority of the positions he held, he never stopped being a humble and accepting priest, and an encouraging and illuminating teacher.


The only time I truly got a whiff of the power and majesty behind the title of Archbishop, was the installation reception and dinner held at the elegant City Club in downtown San Francisco in 2006. It was a daunting, once-in-a-lifetime experience. The mingling of so many red-hatted bishops, scarlet robed monsignors, and black suited priests all in the same place was intimidating. I felt I was lost at a Vatican Conclave, surrounded by an ecclesiastical army of cardinals, bishops, and priests. The only person who made the experience pleasant was George. He sought me out, introduced me to some of his personable friends and compatriots, told humorous stories of his youth in Long Beach, and lowered my level of discomfort with his consideration and attention.





I also never walked away from an encounter with George without learning something about art, literature, movies, or my relationship with God. He presented his ideas and thoughts in such a gentle and inviting manner that he inspired me to investigate and act. Movies were a passion for him, and he loved giving reviews and recommendations. I remember once mentioning that Kathy and I had seen the 2008 movie version of Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited. Without mocking the movie too much, he described the novel in such glowing fashion as one of the finest example of Catholic literature that I was compelled to finally read it for myself, and then buy the 1981 miniseries. He was right on that time, although I still scratch my head in wonder at his quirky love of the movie, Fargo. On another occasion, when we had him to dinner at our beach house, I hesitatingly mentioned that I was thinking of auditing a Bible class at Fuller Seminary in Pasadena. Thinking that a Catholic bishop would try to dissuade me from attending a Protestant institution, he surprised me by heartily recommending it, even suggesting that I might be interested in subscribing to Books & Culture, a Christian review of literature.





However, even though I considered him more of a friend than a priest, he always found a way to remind me of his vocational commitment to serve God. I particularly recall two events that so clearly demonstrated that fact to me, I felt compelled to write about them in my web log. One was about a weekend visit to San Francisco that Kathy and I paid him in 2010, and the second was about a Pastoral Letter he wrote to his Catholic community in San Francisco after undergoing bypass surgery.

On a late Saturday evening in 2010, George welcomed Kathy and me to his residence in San Francisco. After a tour of his beautiful home, he invited us to Sunday’s mass, which was to be an extended celebration of the Feast of the Assumption because the Cathedral was consecrated to St. Mary of the Assumption. He would be con-celebrating the service with two other bishops and three newly consecrated monsignors. It was going to be a big deal, so I assumed it would be filled with much pomp, ritual, and flowery testimonials to Mary and the Catholics of the archdiocese. I wasn’t disappointed. The cathedral was resplendent, and the music and liturgy were elegant and carefully choreographed. A long line of altar servers, chaplains, priests, monsignors, and mitered bishops processed out from behind the altar, paralleled the monumental walls of the cathedral, and streamed down the center aisle, as the choir sang soaring tributes to Mary, the mother of Christ.






As best I can recall, George’s homily went something like this:
He began by reciting specific lines from Mary’s prayer, the Magnificat, explaining how they described who would be first into the Kingdom of God, and who would be last.
“Just listen to Mary’s words,” George told the elegantly clad congregation, “for they contain Christ’s later message: ‘God has shown the strength of his arm, and has scattered the proud in their conceit.’ It is the humble, not the vain and the arrogant, that follow Christ’s example and recognize him in their neighbors. The poor will see life clearly, as through a clean window or an open door, while the proud will look at life in a mirror.”
“Again, listen to Mary’s prayer,” he continued: ‘God has cast down the mighty from their thrones, and has lifted up the lowly.’ Jesus showed the example of this throughout his lifetime, by dining with sinners and tax collectors, and paying more attention to the poor, the needy, and the outcasts like the Samaritans.”
“And finally,” George concluded, “Mary says: ‘God has filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he has sent away empty.’ God does not value us according to our possessions or our wealth, rather, he measures us by how we use and share those possessions with others. Notice how the values Mary embraced in the Magnificat look ahead to the values her son will teach us in the Beatitudes, during the Sermon on the Mount: Blessed are the poor in spirit, the meek, the sorrowing, the merciful, the clean of heart, and the peacemakers. Like mother, like son. Mary is foreshadowing the Good News of Jesus. Do you see how these topsy-turvy Gospel values turn the earthly values of the world upside down? Mary and Jesus teach us the central importance of loving self-sacrifice in finding the meaning and value in life.”


When Kathy and I met up with George later for brunch, I greeted him with a provocative smile.
“That was quite a radical sermon you delivered today, your eminence”, I remarked. “I think your words turned some people’s comfortable values completely upside down. I imagine many of your parishioners walked away scratching their heads or even angry over what you said.” I was purposely baiting him with my words. I had NEVER called George by his honorific title. He was sometimes “Father”, but mostly George. I was also curious to see how he would respond to my calling his sermon radical.
“That’s what Christ’s message is supposed to do,” he replied gently. “I wouldn’t be doing my job as bishop if I didn’t say it out loud”.
That was it. George had nothing more to say on the matter. He didn’t dissect his sermon or draw me a picture of what it hoped to do. I concluded that he had said it all from the pulpit and he was leaving it for me to sort out for myself. His words haunted me for the remainder of our trip.





I had heard Mary’s Magnificat hundreds and hundreds of times throughout my life, but never grasped its revolutionary message. I was doubly struck by the place that it was expressed. George proclaimed Christ’s radical gospel not on the mean streets of the Mission District, where it would be welcomed by the poor and homeless, but from the pulpit of San Francisco’s luxurious Cathedral, surrounded by elegantly dressed and coiffed parishioners who came to celebrate the feast day of their beautiful church. Besides the tributes and honors being bestowed on that day, the Archbishop was reminding everyone of their harsh duty to Christ’s message of Love and Humility, and what that meant in terms of actions, values, and possessions. Honestly, despite my chiding words to George later that morning, I was in fact one of those parishioners walking out of Sunday mass, struggling to make sense of his homily and the challenge presented in Mary and Christ’s words to us. “The Kingdom of God is here!” Christ had proclaimed, but to see it we needed to “love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength; and love your neighbor as yourself”.  George was right. Christ’s message is radical and revolutionary, and it will never fall or fail, as long as people seek it and strive to live it.



A year later, in 2011, I wrote an essay on aging and death called, When I’m 64. In it I struggled to link three disparate ideas; my age, which coincided with the Beatles’ song, my father’s death at 50 years of age, and my quickly growing granddaughter, Sarah Kathleen. I found the key to my dilemma in a Pastoral Letter George wrote after his bypass surgery and a difficult recuperation. In it he reflected on five lines of a poem by the 17^th-century Anglican clergyman, John Donne, called Hymn To God, my God, in my Sickness:

Since I am coming to that holy room
Where, with Thy choir of saints for evermore,
I shall be made Thy music; as I come
I tune the instrument here at the door,
And what I must do then, think here before.

On re-reading George’s letter, I found two reassuring ideas of death and transition:

“What a lovely image,” George wrote of Donne’s metaphors, “to connect our life here on earth with eternal life! Donne is not gloomy or saccharine or vague. Our life here is a practice session, a rehearsal, if you will, and we prepare for eternal life by living the life of Christ together here and now. We ‘think here before’ about our loving God and our relationship with him, and we ‘tune the instrument’ of living this life here so that it is in harmony with what Christ teaches us in the Gospel in our life together as Church. As I prayed about these lines of Donne, I realized that the rest of my life, long or short, is for tuning and thinking, and, of course, daily practice and rehearsal.”



“We get heaven wrong,” he concluded, “because we spend much of our life here as consumers, so we assume that we will be consumers in eternity. If God brings us to heaven then it is up to him to entertain us and make us happy always. But look at what Donne says: We are not going to an eternal concert where we will listen to God’s music, just as we go to an all-Beethoven or Greatest Broadway Hits concert here. Instead, we become one with God’s music, the profound and eternal music of creation, redemption, and holiness. We will not be God’s houseguests. We will be one with him in love. Of course this is a deep mystery, and there are no floor plans or previews of coming attractions available. Still, Jesus did tell a crucified criminal, ‘This day you will be with me in paradise’, and St. Paul, citing Isaiah says, ‘What eye has not seen, and ear has not heard, and what has not entered the human heart, what God has prepared for those who love him’ (1Corinthians 2:9). Finally, St. John tells us: ‘Beloved, we are God’s children now; what we shall be has not yet been revealed. We do know that when it is revealed, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is’ (1John 3:2). That’s more than enough to get me to ‘think here before’ and to ‘tune the instrument here at the door.”

Not only did George’s letter clearly restate the Christian Easter promise of resurrection and eternal life with God, but it also provided some beautiful metaphors to help me understand my doubts and fears of death. Strange, isn’t it, how some metaphors get to the point better than concrete explanations or definitions? Metaphors are the language of poets and mystics when describing the abstract, or the unexplainable. How else can one express the divine, the eternal, love, and God? We can’t, so we describe something else; an object, an action, or an idea, that conveys a similar feeling or emotion. A metaphor, as a Buddhist would say, is “the finger pointing to the moon”. They are the words and expressions that approximate the mysteries of the eternal and divine.



I welcomed George’s images of our life here on earth as a practice session, a musical rehearsal for the next stage, when we will die and become one with God’s music. It’s a more elegant and poetic way of saying “I believe in the holy Catholic Church, the Communion of Saints, the forgiveness of sins, the Resurrection of the body, and life everlasting”. That concise statement acknowledges death and resurrection, but implies that we will be instantly changed from conscious mind to enlightened soul. My dreams aren’t quite sold on the idea that the transition from mind to spirit will happen that fast, and I don’t think it can be taken for granted. I love life; I treasure the people I love; and I will be loath to give them up. I anticipate that death will be a difficult transition for me, unless I become better prepared. I also believe that at the moment of death, the soul remains – somewhere, for a time. I can’t guess how long this period of transition lasts. The Buddhist Tibetan Book of the Dead claims that this period of adjustment lasts from two to five days, or until the spirit sorts itself out in one of six realms. Like Dr. Kubler-Ross’ “preparations for death”, and John Donne’s “tuning the instrument at the door”, and “thinking” before entering, I’ve come to the conclusion that we need to be ready for what happens next. We need to welcome death as a friend, and visualize the next phase – anticipating the moment we become “one with God”.



George retired as Archbishop of San Francisco in 2012, but he never stopped serving as a priest. He continued giving classes, homilies, and doing retreat work, conducting at least six week-long retreats over the last 4 years before his illness forced him to stop. At the Memorial Mass said at the Cathedral of Our Lady in downtown Los Angeles, shortly after his death, his life-long companion and fellow Archbishop, Cardinal William Levada, summed up his old friend with these words:


“Archbishop George Niederauer lived his 80 years applying the truth of the Gospel to his own life as a Christian, and as a priest and bishop, preaching and teaching others to join him on his journey. He did this with great intelligence, ‘laced’ with good humor. I think all of us who knew him would agree that he loved to laugh, and to see us laugh with him. He used the many gifts God gave him to great effect, and we thank God for lending him to us for this long while.”



I would simply add that George had perfected his instrument after years and years of practice, and it was finally time for him to perform his symphony and become music with his Lord. Rest in peace, my friend.



 

I hear mariachi static on my radio
And the tubes they glow in the dark
And I’m there with you in Ensenada
And I’m here in Echo Park.

Carmenita, hold me tighter
I think I’m sinking down.
And I’m all strung out on heroin
On the outskirts of town.
(Carmenita: Warren Zevon – 1976)

There are communities in Los Angeles that spill over with images, scenes, and emotions from my past. They are a litany of evocative names that mean little to the many residents living in the suburbs on the outskirts of town. Lincoln Heights, Boyle Heights, Rosehill, Alhambra, and Silver Lake – these were the vecindades, or neighborhoods I lived in during my most impressionable years. People of different languages, skin colors, nationalities, and religions populated those districts. Every street had a different mixture. Walking along No. Broadway in Lincoln Heights, I recall passing an Italian grocery store, a Jewish shoe repair shop, a Mexican muebleria (furniture store), and a Japanese watch repair. A streetcar ride to downtown would take us through the wondrous pagodas of Chinatown to the exotic bazaars of Grand Central Market at the foot of Bunker Hill.

During the 1950’s, my family migrated through four rented homes around the city, never settling too far from my grandparents’ homestead in Lincoln Heights, a community Northeast of Chavez Ravine. Now, so many years later, when driving past those sections of the city, I find myself suddenly overcome with nostalgic fragrances of that past. That’s what happened last March, when I took my camera and strolled around Echo Park, while Kathy attended a school meeting in Silver Lake.


I was captivated by Echo Park from the moment I saw it, soon after moving into the Silver Lake area on Duane Street in circa 1953. It was the first “lake” I had ever seen, and at 6 years old, it looked immense. This urban body of water was surrounded by an oval walkway, with sloping green banks, and a tiny island located in the northeast corner that could be reached by a wooden bridge. It was anchored on the eastern shore by a boathouse with a miniature lighthouse tower. My siblings and I would often gaze longingly at that brightly painted boathouse, watching lucky families rent the two-person paddleboats docked there. Unfortunately, my mom and dad considered cruising the lake a frivolous expense, so we spent our time walking, resting, and wishing they would someday relent. They never did.




Even at a young age, I recognized that Echo Park wasn’t much of a “park”. It paled before the immense tracts of rolling lawns and wooded landscapes found in the two rustic retreats of Los Angeles – Griffith Park and Elysian Park. Those were the rustic preserves of the city that housed vast playgrounds and picnic areas, horse stables, Travel Town, the city zoo, the planetarium, and multiple recreational activities and attractions. Echo Park was simply a decorative urban pond, ringed by a sloping, ribbon of grass. It was only accidently that I discovered its playground area, located across the freeway on Glendale Blvd, with tennis courts and ballparks. The park was also rumored to house a swimming pool, which my neighborhood friends and I were never able to find while I lived there. Only as an adult, driving west on the 101 out of L.A., did I spot it from the freeway. It was a tiny “plunge”, not deep enough to include a diving board, hidden across the street from the lake at the intersection of Bellevue Ave and the freeway onramp. It was as much a pool as Echo Park was a lake. Yet despite all these shortcomings, I loved it, and took immense regional pride in utilizing it. This sense of propriety really took hold when I started walking and bussing to the park on Saturday mornings with my brother to fish. Yes, we were among the unlikely Sportsmen of Echo Park in the 50’s.



I wish I could recount a straight narrative of my experiences as an Echo Park fisherman, but my memory of that time doesn’t work that way. I recall a mixture of images and episodes involving fishing with my brother Arthur and our neighborhood friend Joey when I was 9 or 10. I don’t remember all of the particulars, or their exact chronological sequence, but I do know it began with our desire to fish, and it lasted less than a year, over a series of Saturday adventures.



The concept of fishing was first planted in my head when my mother and father bought 2 fishing rods to take as gifts on a driving trip to Mexico. I was greatly intrigued by this rugged sport that our Mexican cousins engaged in, and soon began pestering my dad, month after month, to buy us one. I really started badgering him after observing the large number of men and other boys fishing along the shore of Echo Park Lake. Although he never bought us authentic fishing rods, my dad did compromise on giving us some basic instruction and providing the most rudimentary equipment. He took Arthur and me to a fish and tackle store on Glendale Blvd near the park, where we purchased licenses, fish hooks, weights, floaters (or bobbers), and fishing line on a spindle-like device that I’d seen holding kite string. That was the extent of his investment in our sporting endeavor. I think my dad was testing us to measure our commitment, and see if our early enthusiasm would peeter out with the difficulties and frustrations of the sport.



On a cold, gloomy Saturday morning we began our careers as fishermen. At that time we lived on Cove Ave, a street that slopped downhill to intersect with Glendale, about 4 or 5 miles north of the park. I had recruited our next-door neighbor Joey to join my brother and I on this adventure. Since neither of our fathers was interested in sacrificing their Saturday morning on a seemingly frivolous infantile pursuit, they had provided us with bus fare, and a bag of sandwich bread to mold into balls of dough to bait our hooks. Thinking back on the three of us standing at the bus stop, we must have presented a pretty raggedy picture of fishermen. But at the time we were bursting with excitement and pride at our self-reliance and independence. We felt so confident and mature that we quickly started changing our plans and improvising. Instead of spending our bus fare, we decided to walk to the park, and use the money for lunch. Plus, an extended walk gave us more time to talk, imagine, and visualize ourselves mastering this manly art. Unfortunately, it turned into a disaster! The bread didn’t stay on the hooks. Our fishing lines, without the benefit of a pole, went straight down from the shore, where no fish would ever venture. We looked pathetic, surrounded by older, more capable men and boys, with gleaming fishing rods in their hands, fish knives on their belts, and bait boxes at their feet, casting their fishing lines far out into the lake where the big trout swam. Yet, we didn’t give up.





I don’t recall if it was Joey or Arthur, or both, but someone spoke up, magically dispelling the pall of gloom and frustration that had descended over us. This wasn’t defeat, they insisted, this was merely the first act in a play that had yet to unfold. We needed to recover, review, and reconsider what we were doing and what needed changing. They suggested that we stop trying to fish, get something to eat, sit back and begin studying the fishermen around us. So, with hot dogs in our hands, we took our time strolling around the lake, observing the fishermen on the shore, studying their equipment and movements, and asking questions. The men were more responsive than the boys our age, who probably felt more competitive and didn’t want us benefitting from their own learning curve. On that first trip to the lake we learned a lot. Fishing required an optimistic outlook because it took time and patience, but, at the same time, the sport reciprocated with opportunities for beneficial solitude and comradeship. The fishermen we encountered were thoughtful and helpful, gladly sharing information and advice. Most importantly, we learned that we needed real bait, preferably the worms sold at the boathouse, and actual fishing poles. Our optimistic and positive outlook about fishing soon began paying dividends, with the first of many providential signs and occurrences that marked our journey in fishing.


While walking around our neighborhood on the following trash pickup day, we came across two old bamboo fishing poles standing upright in a trashcan. Although no accompanying gear was provided, Arthur and I clearly felt it was a divine gift encouraging us to continue, and foretelling our success. Upon our arrival home, we combined the poles to our fish line, hooks, weights, and floaters, and felt ready to go. The next Saturday we truly believed we looked like fishermen, trudging along Glendale with the poles on our shoulders and a bucket in our hand. This time we combined our fares to buy a can of worms at the boathouse and set out baiting our hooks and casting our lines as best we could.


Thus began a series of mornings, when we passed up Saturday cartoons and the Little Rascals on television, to walk four miles to the park to fish. We continued week after week, with the occasional interruption for family events and trips, believing that one-day a fish would be caught. Our pattern was to buy worms (or bring our own), fish until they were gone, and then walk around the lake, observing, comparing, and soaking up more fishing lore. We learned how hooks were properly baited, rods were cast, and how fish were reeled in and gutted. Despite our impatience at never catching anything we never stopped believing in our inevitable success. In fact, our joking, laughter, and conversations about school, our parents, sports, movies, and television assuaged those feelings and gave us hope. Those lazy and languid mornings and afternoons, sitting on the banks of the lake or lying on the slopping grass, were the precursors of the talks and bull sessions we would have with high school and college friends many years later. When it grew late, or we became restless, we walked home – and talked along the way. Despite our failures, we actually got better, and were occasionally rewarded with tugs on the line and sinking floats or bobbers, indicating a nibbling fish. Those signs were just enough to keep us coming back week after week. Then finally, one Saturday, everything came together.



That morning, as we approached the lake we discovered a covered drainage bunker along the shore that contained soft, silt-like soil teeming with big, fat worms – eliminating the need to buy bait. We tried a new fishing spot, believing that shade and water temperature would make a difference, and we experienced some remarkably good casting, getting our floaters out to where the bigger fish swan. Then it happened. I felt a tug on the line and saw the floater sink into the water, and then the line went rigid.
“I got one!” I shouted for the first time. Immediately Art and Joey were beside me, whispering advice and encouragement:
“Bring him in steady”.
“Don’t yank!”
“You got him!”
Since we had no reels, I assume we pulled the trout in by hand, rolling the line around and around the rod. There he was on the line – a trout, about 4 or 5 inches long. It was the sort of fish most veteran fishermen would have thrown back, but this was my reward for weeks and weeks of early rising, and long walks to and from the lake. Ultimately that trout was our only trophy, and I wasn’t going to toss it back. Filling the bucket we had carried all of those weeks with water, we placed the fish inside and started home. Feeling happy and triumphant, we rode back home on the bus, dying to tell our families of our achievement and describing the event. The trout found a temporary home in our bathtub, where we showed it off all weekend, until it perished from lack of oxygen and neglect. It also signaled the demise of our fishing careers.


After walking around the perimeter of the lake, taking photos from as many perspectives as I could think of, I rested at one of the few benches dotting the shore. Gazing up at the new skyline that framed it’s southern horizon, I was reminded of a emotional passage from Nora Ephron’s movie, You’ve Got Mail, when Kathleen Kelly mused in an email about the passing of  time and her bookstore, Little Shop Around the Corner:


“People are always telling you that change is a good thing. But all they’re really saying is that something you didn’t want to happen at all…has happened. My store is closing this week. I own a store. Did I tell you that? It’s a lovely store, and in a week it will be something really depressing, like a Baby Gap. Soon, it’ll be a memory. In fact, someone, some foolish person, will probably think it’s a tribute to the city, the way it keeps changing on you, the way you can never count on it, or something. I know because that’s the sort of thing I’m always saying. But the truth is… I’m heartbroken. I feel as if part of me has died, and no one can ever make it right”.




I felt a little like Kathleen Kelly at that moment. Our family had moved away, our childhood friends and neighbors were gone, and all I had left of those times were my fractured memories of days long ago. I was also struck by the paradoxical idea of how much and, yet, how little had really changed as I looked about the lake and the surrounding homes, condos, and apartments. Much was the same. Angelus Temple, the church built by the evangelist, Aimee Semple McPherson, was still standing there, across the street, as glaringly white and structurally impressive as ever. The twin spouting water fountains still sprayed water skywards in geyser-like fashion, the boathouse still rented paddleboats, and the gardens of lotus flowers still floated on the surface of the lake. What had changed was the city around it, and the economic and ethnic makeup of the people who lived in this now trendy section of town. When we moved away in 1960, as part of the middle class migration to the Westside and the suburbs of the San Fernando Valley, Echo Park was the poor man’s Silver Lake, with a predominately Mexican and Mexican-American population. Over the succeeding decades it became more and more economically depressed and gang ridden. The grass and lotus flowers died, the trout disappeared, and the water became scummier and scummier. Yet, with the turn of the century, the city changed and the park was renewed. You can’t be disappointed in a city that keeps re-inventing itself, because that’s what world-class cities do. Cities just don’t stay the same. Neighborhoods change, children grow up and move away, and grow old. Yes, the city was different, but Echo Park and its lake had managed to survive and stay very much as it had always been. It was reassuring. Oh, and I learned that the city still stocks the lake with trout, and allows fishing during the summer months, from June to September. Some things should never change.