Chapter One

The War Is Over

Forty years old. That’s my age as I sit here and search for words that might help somebody. Help you perhaps. Most probably, I will be the one who is helped here. That's what they say anyway, isn't it? Get it out. Don't hold it inside. It will eat at you. Well, I guess that I am doing ok when you look at it that way, because it has been eating at me since as far back as I can recall. Exactly how far back that is has become somewhat of a mystery, considering that I seem to have lost quite a few of the earlier years of my life. Lost them, or shoved them so deep down, that I can’t… or wont recall them.

I do, however, recall enough to find myself here, at forty years of age, ready to share them with you. Ready to submerge into the depths of a very deep ocean of life altering events. It can rightfully be argued that most events are life altering, however when I use that term, I refer to something more akin to, life mangling. On our little outing into the hell that is my life, I expect that you may find yourself quite shocked. Shocked because you can’t believe that a person could survive such experiences. Shocked because my experiences pale in comparison to your own. Either way, try and keep the following in mind as we travel. My intention is not to shock you with details of an abused family. Nor am I searching for sympathy or attention. So you ask, what are my intentions here? The answer is twofold.

My primary goal is to reach out to the sadly, very large number of  the many like me, who have endured and possibly still are enduring the never ending struggles that come with being hatched into an unfriendly nest. The young ones, who are locked into concentration camp like homes, wondering what long-term fate awaits them. The older ones like myself who have spent a lifetime feeling like a dented can on the supermarket shelf. Questioning every good thing that comes into your life and wondering when it will be yanked away from you. Awaiting that inevitable moment of truth when the rest of the world realizes who you really are and turns its collective back on you. I know that you are out there. Young ones, older ones, I have seen you. Some, I have recognized and did my best to intervene if just for a moment. Others have learned to wear the mask as well as I. Those folks carry a different cross. They smile, laugh, and give the outward appearance of a very "together" person, only to scream in silence when alone with the demons of their truth. No matter which team you are from, you will surly want to hear from me. Hear from a person who has drug around the cross of his past for forty years. Hear from a person who has fought the fights that you have fought. Fought them and won all of them to some degree. A person who was able to scratch and claw his way to the surface of his childhood and is here to shout good news to the world. To shout good news to you! What is that news you ask? The wars over! Lay down your weapons and come on out! We can all finally go home now! Some of you more senior folks will recall the Japanese soldier from World War Two, who was on an island in the pacific somewhere when the war ended. He never received word that the war was over and continued to hide and clean his weapon for many years. He would see strange propeller less aircraft flying high in the skies as the years and the world moved on without him. He soldiered on for many, many years until he was discovered and given the official word that the war was over. I to, like that soldier have been faithfully manning my post and maintaining a posture of war. Like that Japanese soldier, nobody told me the news. The news that my war ended when I was eighteen years old. For twenty two years, I have stayed in my foxhole, remained on my island, ready to battle in a war that no longer needed to be fought.

And so now, speaking solely as a veteran of combat, I will tell my story. I will take a deep breath to calm myself and relive the uncomfortable memories of combat for my group of fellow veterans. A group who will understand my laughter and tears as only combat veterans can.

Chapter Two

104^thStreet

3726 West104^thStreet in Inglewood California. That address will forever live in my head as hallowed ground. Hallowed ground in the same way that Normandy Beach, or Khe San, Vietnam would be considered. A place where very bad things happened, and where souls were lost. For me,104^thstreet is where the memories of my youth really begin.

There were four of us then. Five, if you count my mother. Four white trash kids and a whiter, trashier mother who would have been right at home in the poorer hills of Appalachia. The house was either a triplex or a duplex but either way, we were in the rear most section of the property. The front door opened onto the West side of the house and toward another set of triplexes or duplexes, where other fucked up families lived their secret lives. In fact, in that house that was across from our front door, lived some poor bastard who had fought in Vietnam. Now, this was the late60s and the country was full of returning vets in various stages of recovery. This guy as I recall had a young wife and a little girl. I don't remember too much about him but I do remember the day that he lost it. His wife came running out of the house at midday, screaming and crying. Everyone in the "whateverplex" ran out to see what was up, as people do in poor neighborhoods. I guess they would do it in upper class areas also, but in a poor neighborhood, it is done a certain way. Most of the people who come out are barefoot, overweight, braless women with snot nosed kids trailing behind them. I guess I was one of the snot nosed kids that day. Anyway, the guy (I want to say that his name was Mr. Necklace) had plugged up all of the drains in the house and turned on all of the faucets. He had also pulled a garden hose into the house and had that on wide open. By the time the cops showed up and managed to get him out of the flooded house, he was stark naked, soaking wet and ranting about something. I have a vivid memory of the two officers struggling to put him into the back seat of the police car. I wonder what ever happened to him

I was around four or five when we moved to 104^th. Prior to that we had lived on Perlita Street in Glendale, where I was born. I do not remember living in Glendale but I do understand that it was a home filled with about the same amount of love as104^th. I was the youngest, and going up in age, Sandy was next. Her full name was Sandra Jeanne, but we all called her Sandy. She was two years older than me and, like me, had a head full of bright orange hair. Sandy was my full sister, in that we shared the same mother and father. Next was Shelly, who was a teenager in my earliest memories of her. She was always a tall, gangly, athletic girl who loved to catch bugs and study them. She had a microscope that Grandma had given her as a gift and she spent a lot of time studying spit, sugar, blood and leaves under its lens. The oldest was Cindy and I do not have many memories of her living at home. She spent most of her childhood years in foster homes. I do remember catching her smoking a cigarette in the house once and threatening to tell mom. That situation was resolved when she agreed to let me try a puff. Both her and Shelly had the same father, which accounted for the black hair that they sported. Though I have always hated the title, I guess Cindy and Shelly were in fact my, Stepsisters. In any event, that was the family such as it was at the beginning of my earliest memories. Of course, there was Puccini the Pekinese and winky who was Shelly's beloved cat.

Now would be a good time to describe "the bomb." I am not sure when, but at sometime in our history, we began to secretly refer to mom as, "the bomb". That actually turned out to be a rather accurate description of her, considering the damage that she has left in her wake. In that sense, she was a lot like a nuclear bomb because those who were not killed by her blast were condemned to live with the effects of her poisonous fallout. Like the survivors of Hiroshima, the effects of our bomb will be felt for generations to come.

Marjorie was her name and she seemed like a Marjorie. She was a large woman. A large and strong, physically strong woman. Now, in the earlier days, she was thin and I guess attractive for the times. I personally think that everything from the sixties and seventies was quite ugly, including the fashions. Even the very women themselves were very different from the young women of today.  They had flat bodies with no ass and strange hairstyles. But, mom must have been considered pretty by the standards of the day, because she never hurt for male attention. She was, in my opinion, the very example of why I hate that era and everything about it. I saw her as a wannabe hippie who loved everything that was anti establishment and hated anything with structure. She hated the government, the police, the military, the war, rules, leaders, authority, cleanliness, and anything else that might lend itself to order. Conversely, she loved bikers, real hippies, Abby Hoffman, Che Guevara, anyone who was gay, criminals, the SLA, and anything or anyone who broke rules, created chaos or looked "neat". That was how my mom described anyone who looked dirty, unkempt or bizarre. Neat. She could see a guy with a padlock hanging from his nose and jumper cables clamped onto his nipples and she would say, he's neat. The word "neat" still makes me want to smash a window to this day! But, I digress.

Home on104^thwas a different experience for each of us kids. As the youngest and the only male, I think that I had it the easiest. The girls paid dearly for being girls with an out of control mom like the bomb. Mom was always pro heavy discipline and never hesitated to ball up her fist like a prizefighter and get busy with her "looser" kids. She would work the girls over pretty well on a constant basis. Her moves were not only imaginative but also quite effective for a fighter looking for that knockout punch. She especially liked the, swing the little girl around by her hair with one hand, while punching in the face with the other move. At any time, one could easily find clumps of red and black hair drifting around the floors of our abode. More on that later.

The neighborhood was an older one whose dwellings ranged from dreary apartment buildings to tired wooden single-family homes that struggled to stay up. The street was situated directly under the flight path of airplanes landing at the Los Angeles International Airport. By the time the planes were over our house, they were quite low and very loud. As they screamed toward the airport, one could easily see that the landing gear was down and could even see the windows of the ones that were off to the side a bit. Those gargantuan craft would shake the houses and from time to time break windows, which as I understood it, were paid for and replaced by some airport authority. Groups of us kids would spend lots of time sprawled on our backs on the little patch of front yard and watch them as they came in. Where these planes were coming from was the favorite topic during those times. I was a bit young to offer up much in the way of theory but was fascinated by the talk of the older ones. For me, the thought of anything beyond out neighborhood was a hard one to grasp. I do have a vivid memory of the Playboy jet flying into Los Angeles a number of times. It was always a very big deal to see the all black jet with the white trademark bunny on the tail. To us, it was like watching the space shuttle land. We were cheap dates and it only took small things to bring smiles to our faces.

Perhaps the biggest annual event back then was when the circus was in town. Just the sentence, "The circus is in town" evokes warmth and happiness as I write. Our proximity to The Inglewood Forum put us in prime position to witness the march of circus animals and related circus people as they made their way from the rails to the tents. I guess the train let them off somewhere in Hawthorne, which was the next town south of us. People would line both sides of Prairie Avenue and enjoy the parade, which was complete with clowns, elephants and an audience of sad people who wanted desperately to be happy, if just for a moment. That's how I remember them anyway, sad, poor and missing something. What that was, I do not know for sure. I just know that the world then seemed dull in flavor and color. My small world seemed almost black and white. Nothing at all like the sharp, defined colorful world that I know today.

The neighborhood was a mixed one at that time, with white folks being the minority. The black population was enveloping the city from the east and became the dominant ethnic group within a few short years. Hispanics made up the second largest group at that time. There were some interesting people who inhabited the nooks and crannies of 104^th, some of who I would give quite a bit to speak with today. One from that category was a woman by the name of Dorothy who lived about four houses down on the left. She was an old woman with jet black hair and she would tell stories of her life to groups of kids that would sit on her porch and listen. We would sit wide eyed as she told us of a tragic voyage that she took as a small child on a ship by the name of, Titanic. I recall her description of her view from a lifeboat, as the gigantic ship was sinking, half submerged with all of her lights still glowing. Dorothy called the scene, "strangely beautiful" and seemed on the verge of tears when she spoke of how the lights flickered before going out forever. She told us that story many times, though we never tired of hearing it.

There was Red the alcoholic who would shuffle to the corner market every day for his liquid "hurt killer". I can see him as clear as day, tall with a bright red crew cut and a collared shirt. I feel a sense of shame now, remembering how we would always ask him for money. He would smile and hand us pennies or nickels and continue on his way. Who knows what his story was? He was the right age to have been a veteran of World War Two or the Korean War and certainly looked the part. Another unknown hero consumed by the vortex of the era. Then there was the Army captain who brought Vietnam home with him. He went by the name Vietnamese word for captain, "Diwee" and lived in a house that was caddy corner to ours. The nightmares that lived in his head also lived in his home. His wife would seek shelter from his physical abuse in neighbors homes and was often seen bruised and bloodied, hiding behind dark glasses and scarves. There were many stories floating around about him waking up at night and believing that he was under attack from the Cong. God, that’s pathetic. He served his country and everyone lost. We lost the war. He lost his sanity and his wife lost years of her life. Another victim of the sixties. I wonder if anything good came out of those days beyond the space program.

Another interesting annual occurrence on the street was the flood. It would come every year during the heavy rains and was due to poor planning and engineering by the people who laid out the neighborhood. There we would be, the girls running around stacking furniture as the water in the house rose and my very intoxicated mother barked orders like a drunk drill sergeant. I would sit on the bathroom sink and watch as the scene played out. We would always fear electrocution when the water reached the electrical outlets, but I never did see that happen. The whole area would flood, and the fire department would be out the next day, pumping water from the homes while the young kids ran around looking for treasure that had floated from the homes. The clean up of the mud and replacement of the carpet would be the job of Watt, our landlord who must have gotten tired of repeating the task. Who would name their son Watt? Looking at it now, I guess that the floods were natures way of trying hard to rid the homes of the dirt that emanated from within. It was in vain as we soon discovered. Dirt of that sort does not come out with water. In many cases its permanent.

It was a different time though and kids, even kids living in fucked up paces ,could still do things that the kids of today could never do. Large bands of us would go on adventures that we called, wall walking. We would climb on the brick walls that separated the backyards on the blocks and walk as far as we could. Along the way, we would discover many things. We almost always ate well on these trips, finding pomegranate trees, peach trees, cumquat trees and a host of edible berries that thrived in the area. Of course, we also ran into our share of vicious dogs that were bent on ending our lives. The bravest amongst us would dare to continue past a high jumper in spite of the sharp teeth snapping inches from their keds. Then there was the occasional irate adult who would chase us off of the wall and onto whatever street we ended up on. These journeys would take us miles from home and were really the source of some of my best memories.

Another favorite thing to do was go play in, the field. This was a vacant lot that was adjacent to the Century Drive in Theater. It was a large lot with one large and very old tree in the center. We would spend mornings making kites out of newspapers and old sheets for the tails. Then, we would head over to the field and fly them. Shelly came up with the idea of engaging in aerial combat and taught us all to arm our kites with razorblade weapons. We would put razorblades into sticks and tie the sticks to the tails of our kites. Once airborne, the object was to slice through the strings of the others, sending them tumbling into the unknown world east of the field. The last kite flying was the winner. Kites today just don't seem to contain the same magic that they did back before Nintendo and computer games. I believe that when children's interest in flying kites faded, the world became a colder place.

At one time, there was a row of abandoned, cars at the East End of the field. They were cars that had obviously been involved in serious accidents and were a big attraction to us kids. Each of us picked out our favorite car, which ever after became known as, my car, and entrance by anyone else was strictly frowned upon. We spent hour upon hour driving to all sorts of imaginary places in our smashed up beauties. We would talk about who had owned them and even more exciting, who had died in them. Each car had bloodstains that you could see if you knew exactly where to look, provided that you squinted your eyes just right. I cant recall how long the cars were there but I do know that we sure got our mileage from them.

With all of the opportunity for bad to happen with a group of kids playing, unsupervised in a vacant lot in a suburb, I must say that we were quite fortunate. The only negative experience that I can recall actually was quite an exciting mystery for us to ponder. While flying kites in the field one summer day, I noticed a large paper bag sitting under the old tree. It was rolled up pretty tight and when I picked it up, it was pretty heavy. Sandy and Shelly ran over to where I was when they saw me holding the brown bag. I set it down and slowly opened it, imagining the valuable possibilities. We all leaned in to get a look and were met with something that was covered in plastic wrap. Without a word, I reached in and began to tear away the plastic. When the severed German Shepard’s head came into full view I shrieked and released it back into the bag with a hollow thud. The girls made disgusted faces as we all backed away from the bag and stared. Who had done such a thing and why was never known to us, but we spent many hours imagining how it must have happened.

104^thraneast and west. We lived between Dotty and Crenshaw Boulevard and were on the south side of the street. There was a slight incline as you went east toward Crenshaw that was perfect for roller skating. Of course, these were the days of the metal and clay wheels that meant instant face plant if you hit a small stone. Skinned knees and elbows were badges of honor back then and we wore them with much pride. West of Dotty was Prairie Avenue, which was a much larger street. On the Southeast corner of 104^thandPrairie, was a mom and pop store by the name of, M&O Market. Looking back on it, it was a great store simply loaded with character of the likes no longer seen. There was a meat counter in the rear with an honest to goodness butcher, who cut meat like an artist works the canvas. There was also a real wooden barrel filled with the biggest, sourest dill pickles that I have ever seen in my life. For a few cents, you could walk out of that store with one of those ice-cold babies, wrapped in apiece of newspaper and gnaw on it for a good long while. Near the front counter were jars filled with liquorish, pixy sticks. Gum and jawbreakers, all of which could be purchased for one penny each. On hot summer days, we would canvas the neighborhood for glass soda bottles to bring to M&Os where we could trade them for cash. We would pull in three cents for the small bottles and a nickel for the large ones and spend all of our earnings on the pixy sticks. Then, with a little bit of sugar and water, a cardboard box or two and a sign, we would have a working Kool-Aid stand set up on the side of the road. I remember car after car stopping to buy a glass of semi cool Kool-Aid from the scraggly group of kids on 104^theach time we did that. Perhaps that was a piece of good that came with those times. A time when a kid could still do kid things. These days, if a stranger did not grab one of the kids and mutilate him, one of the customers would sue the whole group for spilling on his shirt and staining the fabric. Yea, I guess there was some good back then. But unfortunately, this is not a story about lots of good things that went on in the Weiss family. I mean, I am sure that every now and again there was a smile in Auschwitz, but that was far from the main event. As we know, many tears can be hidden in the smile of a hurting soul.