Cooking with Gas.....again.

The 1964 Rheem Monterey Wedgewood is fixed and back in production. It really only needed a much delayed service maintenance. In March of 1996 I bought this from a girl who was vacating the apartment I would soon be moving into and setting up shop in for the next 10 years. Her name I still remember was Janet Blazer and she was relocating to Disney Florida. I asked how much....she said $100, I said how about 90 ? She looked at me with a puzzled looked on her face and I am sure thought to herself "really, this moron is negotiating over 10 dollars over a stove that he doesn't have to move and is in turn key condition ?" She agreed to the 90 and I indeed felt like a moron. I have held on to it for almost 20 years and taken it with me to three places I've called home. I even had to wrestle it away from a girlfriend I briefly lived with who thought she had the right to keep it.  Dedicated to Janet Blazer....wherever you are.

The Taco Stand - San Pueblo, California 1971.

I was taking improv classes at the Acme Comedy Theater in Hollywood during the mid-1990s. I thought I was pretty good at it and one day for no particular reason at all, I just quit. One of my instructors was a beautiful redhead female about my age or a little older, named Audrey R. She was from the Midwest somewhere, if memory serves me right , Wisconsin, possibly Racine.

During one of the breaks, we started chatting about the early 1970's television show,  The Partridge Family and watching it as we both grew up in different parts of the country. The Partridge family, with matriarch Shirley Jones, lived in the fictional town of San Pueblo California. Keith (David Cassidy) and Laurie (Susan Dey) would often hang out or meet up with dates at “The Taco Stand”. This is where all the cool kids hung out in the show. It was basically a mission style Taco Bell place with laminated tables serving up ground beef, cheese, beans in a hard shell or a tortilla to beautiful surfer type kids.

Living in Southern California during the time of the show, I knew what a taco was. I ate them at places like Pup n' Taco, Taco Bell and at places like the Grand Central Market….way back then.

Audrey confessed to me that as a teenager living in Wisconsin, she did not know what a Taco was. This delicacy had not reached that part of the country in 1971. During episodes, where Laurie or Keith or even Danny (Bonaduce) would go to the “Taco Stand”, Audrey imagined it was an Opium Den where these cool hippie singing kids would go. They would be served strange food and the ground beef and beans would be the “host” for the drug. I will never forget how she made these hip gyrations and snapped her fingers in an ode to “70’s cool” as she was describing this. I thought it was so funny and I will never forget her for this moment of extreme laughter. Today she is still an active actor in the city, I looked her up, but she would not remember me from a plate of “Re-fried Beans”.

Dedicated to Audrey. I ordered up a bean and cheese burrito today for lunch at the El Cielito Taco Stand at Olvera Street Los Angeles and thought of you.

A memory of Baker Street on Bates Ave, 1978.

Certain songs just grab me, shackle me, force my eyelids open with those Clockwork Orange type prongs and project me into a tiny nostalgia theater were I am forced to watch an event of the past, some bad, some indifferent and some nice to remember. Songs that were not necessarily in my listening genre, such as Baker Street By Gerry Rafferty, are one of the nice ones to remember. Baker Street came out sometime in the winter of 1978 while the Hillside Stranglers were still at large. But that is not the memory I recall from the song. From that metaphorical little theater where I am the sole patron, I sit and watch the past, devoid of any movie theater popcorn. I see myself standing on the top of the front staircase of our tiny Spanish abode on Bates Ave in the 90027 and call out to my sister as she is revving up her blue 1970 Toyota Corona. “Wait for me!“ In the mornings, her and I would pile in and then pick up Anita O. in Silverlake. They would drop me off on Sunset and Highland to continue my public transportation travels to Norte Dame HS in the Valley, while they would continue on to UCLA. Inevitably, sometime during that short 15 minute drive, Baker Street would come on the radio and its haunting saxophone solo would engulf the small cab of her rickety little Japanese import. On the weekends my sister held at part time job at the old Sears on Pico and Robertson. Sometime during her morning shuffle of getting ready for work, Baker Street would hit the airwaves from a radio in the house. She would hurry out the door, down the long staircase to that blue Toyota parked on the street. The haunting saxophone solo would be playing in my head as I would look out the front window and watch that blue car disappear onto Fountain Ave in the overcast morning backdrop. I would spend the rest of the morning watching American Bandstand and Soul Train and then stare at my face in the bathroom, asking what the hell is happening to me. My sister met her now husband of 32 years at that Sears around this time, she graduated from UCLA in 1981 and they married in 1983. Today both her oldest son and his wife graduated with an MBA from the University of NY in Prague where they now live. My sister and her husband attended the graduation and I am sure both proud parents were exactly that, proud. From my  apartment in the city of Alhambra, California, thousands of miles away, I sit alone but also stand proud. I close my eyes and listen to Baker Street which takes me back to the Bates Ave of 1978 and think about my wonderful sister and all her accomplishments. The enchanting little melody to Baker Street and the sax solo playing in my head while I enjoy a nice cold brew in celebration. I think to myself, when will I ever see them again. Sears on Pico and Robertson was demolished years ago, that 1970 Toyota Corona has probably seen many incarnations as sheet metal, Gerry Rafferty and the Sax player, Rapheal Ravenscroft both passed away a few years ago, while the staircase to that tiny little Spanish home on Bates Ave still stands firm, defiant from the wrecking ball.