False Starts: Mistakes & Missteps Growing Up In The 70s

False Starts

Ken La Salle

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2016 Ken La Salle

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DEDICATION: To my Mom, Audrey, with my love

The Streets of My Neighborhood…Santa Ana, California.

Prologue

A Box Filled With Fantasy

This story begins with a box. A steamer trunk, actually. The kind of steamer you might have seen Jimmy Stewart waxing rhapsodically over in It’s A Wonderful Life. I want something for a thousand and one nights, with plenty of room for labels from Italy and Baghdad, Samarkand…a great big one.

Jimmy Stewart playing George Bailey would have been impressed. This steamer trunk was large enough to hold a pre-pubescent version of myself and so heavy that I couldn’t lift it until long after the memories of that scrawny pre-teen were firmly set in the grey stone battlements of my brain. Strange to think I’ve had this trunk for most of my life when I consider how covetously I looked at it before it was actually mine. You see, before this trunk was mine it belonged to my sister, Audrey. Before it belonged to Audrey, my brother, Keith, claimed it as his own. But then, my mom found my brother hiding pornography in it. And then, my mom found my sister hiding drugs in it. She couldn’t trust them with a big box that could be locked up, or so I conveniently advised her…so she gave it to me. I knew better than to stash my porn or my drugs in such an obvious place, so I never had to worry about my mom taking it away.

Instead, I chose from a very young age to dedicate that box to holding all of my childhood memories. In its vast recesses, I stashed old cards and letters, yearbooks and awards, cherished items and knick-knacks—and I kept stashing more and more of those things all through my teenaged years.

The idea was that I would have something of value to share with my own children. As the box filled up, I would imagine sitting with them on my fiftieth birthday, which seemed old to me once, and share all of the memories in this box one by one. It was a good fantasy to have. It was the kind of fantasy that made me feel…secure, in a way, knowing exactly where my life would lead.

Then, sadly, my first wife aborted our only pregnancy. We certainly didn’t try after that. I suppose a good clue as to why it was our only pregnancy came when she asked me for the pros and cons of having the child. I said something like, In the pro column, we’ll have a child to love. Cons? You won’t be able to buy anything you want whenever you want it. You’ll have to wait for a new car.

She chose the car over love. In the course of time, I found someone with priorities more like my own.

My second wife, Vicky, loved the idea of children and we tried for several years. Sadly, though, this was not to be. With me pursuing a career as a writer, artificial insemination was too expensive. Adoption…just never seemed to fit. Vicky had a niece and a nephew and I had my writing career. Slowly, we grew comfortable with childlessness.

Everything worked out fine.

…Except for that box. And I wasn’t getting any younger. As I approached my forty-ninth birthday, I remembered that fantasy of sitting with my children and sharing my childhood memories. As comfortable as I had grown with the idea of never having children, never having anyone to share my memories with left me feeling hollow inside. Somehow, I had destroyed the fantasy I had kinda been living for my entire life.

What are you going to do? Vicky asked me one night as I shared this with her. Of course, I had no idea. I had spent decades preparing to share my memories with my kids and was only now beginning to realize that it would be hard to pull off without said kids.

From a purely biological viewpoint, there was nothing really wrong with me not having kids. My parents genes would certainly not die off any time soon. My older brother, Keith, had fathered two kids of his own. My sister, Audrey, had also given birth to two children. And, as I write this book, my two half-brothers, Dwight and Richard, both have children as well. My family was breeding quite adequately without me and the family tree was safe without my help.

I remembered the last time I had seen so many of them—on the day of my father’s memorial service, the day we said goodbye. I had driven out there, to the patently fake, green landscapes in the middle of the desiccated Arizona desert where the memorial was held, with my mom by my side.

I suppose you’re going to write about this, aren’t you? my mom asked me as we drove back to our homes in Southern California. My mom still lived in the home I grew up in, the home we all grew up in. Isn’t that what you do?

It was…and I did. The book that resulted, The Day We Said Goodbye, was not only about my father’s memorial service, which seemed to send all of his family off in different directions never to see each other again (more or less). The focus on my father in The Day We Said Goodbye made me realize that I had never devoted as much time honoring my other parent, the mother who had raised me after my father had left. I honestly wished I had something similar to a memorial service for my mom to write about—not that I wished her dead—but I was left without anything to say about her…and the years passed…

And as I approached my fiftieth birthday, that box kept reminding me of the dream I had once held so dearly, of sharing it all with my kids.

And then, my mom’s words came back and reminded me…I suppose you’re going to write about this, aren’t you? Isn’t that what you do?

Through every item held in that steamer trunk, there was one constant: my mom. My mom had been there for all of that. Here sat my first pair of glasses. There was my neatly folded and preserved Cub Scouts/Webelos uniform. And, all around, there were pictures my mom had taken and cards my mom had signed.

My glasses were folded in their case with a paper tag I had once inscribed that read Me first pair of glasses. Okay, so I don’t get points for spelling. Their thick, black frames were strong enough to withstand direct contact with an atomic blast—and yet, I broke my glasses on a regular basis as a child. My mom had to pay for every repair and for every new pair of frames, which was considerable on her meager income. The glasses still rest in their original case, which has my optometrist’s name printed on the front: Dr. Bernard G. Rose. Optometrist.

When I pulled the glasses out, I was surprised to find that they still fit…somewhat. Still, after around forty-four years, it was an amazing feeling to return those ancient glasses to their original perch on my face.

And, almost immediately, I wanted to throw up. I don’t know if my eyes were better or worse back then, but looking through them reminded me of the old bottle-bottom jokes made at my expense and the kids who would want to try on my glasses just to see how messed up my eyes were.

The most surprising thing about the Cub Scouts uniform was how small it was. Holding it was like holding some child’s clothing—and, in fact, I was. Only, I was the child. I’d forgotten how many badges I’d earned in the Cub Scouts but there they were, pinned on the Webelos Color Emblem on my right shoulder. What the badges designated was anyone’s guess but just by looking at the pins, one a scroll, another a pallet and brush, one a bird, and one a book, I could see not much had changed. The only badge for sports appeared to be a figure running. We didn’t have any outdoors where I grew up, just the streets of my neighborhood, so I wasn’t surprised to find no badge showing a campfire or a fishing pole.

But my mom had been there for all of that as well. She had kept the uniform clean despite my every attempt at making it otherwise. She had sewn in every badge with that thick, pragmatic thread she used. Scouting had been her idea, a way to get me outside with other boys my age. Those same boys would usually pick on me at school because I was a scrawny kid with absolutely no aptitude for sports. Her plan had worked to a degree but scouting fit me about as well as that uniform would fit today.

That old steamer trunk might never be shared with my non-existent kids but I realized all those memories could be put towards another purpose. I called my mom and asked about her own boxes of memories, boxes that had once annoyed me to no end. You see, where my steamer trunk held all of my favorite memories, my mom had filled boxes with many not-so-favorite memories from my childhood and from my brother’s and from my sister’s as well. I asked her if she wouldn’t mind pulling out all those boxes so I could see what she had. I had an idea for a new book, I told her, but I wasn’t clear on the details. I just wanted to see what she had.

And, oh boy, she had a lot!

When I arrived at her house, she promptly steered me to the garage to help her with her boxes of stuff, these long, dusty crates from ages ago, each one filled with unimaginable treasure…

And I was surprised to see just what the treasure was. And it was treasure, there was no mistaking the pride in my mother’s eyes as we pulled out mementos of her children’s past, a past that was far easier than anything that came later, in the 1980s. The simple truth was that the ’70s were a simpler time for our family. We were all younger and far more innocent. The ’60s were probably even better…but I wouldn’t know. I was hardly born.

My mom and I had a great time rooting through the past together. She showed me the most god-awful art, disasters of color created by a child’s hand. You did that one, she told me. How did she know? She just remembered. After decades in the dust, the memories just popped back into her head.

I wished some things were left unremembered. Two wooden boards painted blue standing half my height and weighing a ton were an attempt on my part of creating a plane. Some of the art was little more than different colored pieces of paper glued together—still attached! And I couldn’t disavow any responsibility for such junk because most of them were scribed in thick, children’s paint: Kenny.

We dug up pages marked by repetitious letters: L L L L M M M M N N N N…Someone was practicing their handwriting. Each letter stood a couple inches high with the curly cursive they used to teach back in 1971 and every page was marked, of course, with a great, big signature: Kenny.

Stacks of homework assignments, tests, and report cards—all with my name on them—showed indisputably just what kind of child I had been.

And what kind of child had I been?

I was a child of the ’70s. Loud and proud…but mostly loud.

Chapter One

All that stuff I can hardly remember

It was the hippest of times. It was the funkiest of times. It was the 1970s.

Ten years or so before, back in the mists of time, my mom and dad had met on the Kodachrome streets of New Jersey. On a bus. When my mom stepped off the bus, my father followed, asked if he could walk with her, and the rest…resulted in three little kids.

My brother, Keith, was born in 1961, a strapping, young lad with the possibility of a bright future ahead of him.

My sister, Audrey, born in 1963, possessed both beauty and talent enough to last a lifetime and more.

I was born in 1965 with a smirk on my face and an aptitude towards seeing all the angles, which I would surely put to good use.

Then, my dad left and screwed it all up.

…In fairness, my mom and dad weren’t really prepared for what their lives had brought them. Both were orphaned at a young age. My mother, originally from somewhere north, possibly Quebec but definitely somewhere in Canada, came from a mixed French extraction. I say mixed only because nobody is really sure what other ethnicity is involved. The few details we eventually learned from her adoption papers suggest that she comes from promiscuous circus folk. Of course. But when it came right down to it, though, my mom was basically a vessel of love, an unending river that both gave love and needed love, but she never seemed to have been raised for more than that. So, when my dad left her in 1970 with three kids to raise alone…that vessel of love broke. My mom spent most of the ’70s just trying to piece herself back together again.

My father was French and proud of it. He also came from a family of religious nuts, which I suppose means I come from a line of promiscuous, ultra-religious circus folk. You can imagine my relief at finding that out. My dad’s folks came out of a time when things like love and affection were left to the women folk…and so was my dad. My dad was abandoned at a very young age, and was fortunate to be raised by his aunts, Anna and Ruby. He was a sickly kid with a million and one talents. By the time he grew up, he was everything my mother was not: Enterprising, industrious, cold-hearted, twisted…

The two worked well on paper. My mom had the love for kids. My dad had the discipline. Well, he liked to discipline kids, at least. His methods were a bit odd, such as when he would send us under our bed as punishment. Perhaps he thought we were dogs…

What do two orphans know about raising kids? Sadly, not a whole lot.

And let’s not forget this was still the 1960s, a decade neither of my parents were suited for. As the old joke goes, they took two ’50s and went right into the ’70s. But the ’60s did not avoid them. I recall my sister telling me about how my dad wanted my mom to abort me when she was pregnant. Roe v. Wade didn’t come along until the 1970s but there were plenty of unsafe abortions at your local butchery just ready for some young mother of two with a third on the way. Mind you, that may have just been a rumor but even my mom told me about the time my dad tried to put all of his kids up for adoption.

He just wasn’t ready. In the parlance of the day, he needed his space.

So, my dad left us. He left us again and again. Truth be told, he wasn’t particularly good at it. But by 1970, he was gone, just as I was getting old enough to form permanent memories.

My brother, Keith, would remember those years with our father better than I. Many of those memories were of a cold and distant man. Others, such as the times when he would bring home these big, cardboard boxes from work and we would draw on them to make them look like cars, get inside of them with holes cut for our heads and arms and legs, and race them around the living room, reminded us of a man who did show affection now and then. He just didn’t quite know how.

Fortunately, he left us with a bit more than memories. He left us with our house, for instance.

It was our parent’s second house. The first was only a few blocks away, on the corner of Greenville and St. Gertrude Place in Santa Ana. The only memories I retain from that house were of the small, concrete path that ran in the front yard, around the sidewalk. This path was only about six inches wide, it wasn’t good for much except as a track to drive my Hot Wheels around…and around. I remember hearing rumors that my folks had converted the garage into a playroom. That sounded almost nice enough to make me miss the house I couldn’t remember. They moved out of that house in the late ’60s and into our home on Center Street.

If ever a child needed a clear sign that they were the center of the universe, and with my low self-esteem it certainly wasn’t me, living on Center Street would do it. After all, we were centrally located between Valley High School and John Adams Elementary. We were smack dab between two junior high schools. The world appeared to lay convenience for us in all directions: stores, parks, shopping malls. We were surrounded by Edinger Avenue to the North, Warner Avenue to the South, Raitt Street to the East, and Fairview Street to the West. We were in the middle of everything.

And in the late ’60s and early ’70s, when I never left the house without my mom anyway, being in the middle felt inescapable. We were stuck there. My dad was the only one to get away.

The things he did leave behind stayed longer than he might have imagined. The stack of Reader’s Digest Almanac & Yearbooks from 1965, 1966, 1967, and 1969 were the only books in our house for years. They were the only reading material a young man could peruse on those slow, summer days when there was nothing on TV, my brother and sister were off with their friends, and boredom was just outside the door with a knife. As each book was about a third of a foot deep, I could prop my head up on one, prop each foot up on two others, and read the last. Reading one of those behemoths wasn’t exactly reading—after all, a typical chapter might include annual snowfall in Bemidji, wheat yields in Oman, and population growth projections in each South American nation. In short, my dad had left behind the best sleeping aids known to man.

I laid claim to one treasure he forgot to take along, though Keith and I would fight over those rights for years. This treasure came in the form of two comedy albums. I couldn’t really play them on the little, portable turntable we had, which was only big enough to play 45s. (A 45, by the way, was a record small enough to hold only about one song, which was called a single. The single 45 spun at a faster rate than a full album and if you tried to play a complete album, which came much larger than a 45, the resulting voices would sound a lot like Alvin & The Chipmunks). Somehow, though, I had the foresight to realize my opportunity would come.

And it did. Over the next seven or eight years, I would play those albums so many times that they would end up more scratched and chipped than anything from a war zone. And, don’t kid yourself, it was a war zone.

But what were these two treasures? The first was The Golden Hits of the Smothers Brothers, Volume Two, which was their first greatest hits album. With a release date of January 1969, my dad must have picked it up shortly before leaving and it threw a wrench into ever figuring out my dad. I mean, this was the Smothers Brothers, one of the least respectful comedy duos of the ’60s. Their TV comedy/variety show—The Smothers Brothers Show—was cancelled after just one season because of its irreverence! How my father, a man who never stopped being Republican even after he died, could love anything irreverent was just beyond me.

The Smothers Brothers were a terrific find for a five year old but the real gem came in: Don Adams meets the Roving Reporter. It’s a comedy album I’d wager no reader has heard before, mostly because no one bought it. It was recorded years before Don Adams became famous as the bumbling secret agent 86 on TV’s Get Smart. The setup is simple enough. Over thirteen tracks, a roving reporter goes from one story after another interviewing, in almost every case, Don Adams playing some wise-cracking character. On one track, he’s a bank robber with a horrible track record. On another, he’s a killer cornered by police. On the final track, he’s trying to break out of prison. As a kid, I thought this was magic. Somehow, with just two voices, they were creating these wild scenarios and I began to learn, without even knowing it, the art of comedy.

My dad probably never knew that he left me the art of comedy. My mom certainly didn’t. And once I got those records spinning, she would scream at me to turn them off. An adult can only stand one album being played over and over and over so many times but a kid? A kid eats that up. And I ate it until I could recite each album from start to finish, until I became known as that guy with the comedy albums.

I suppose if I was named after my parents, their divorce would have had more of an impact. It sure did on my brother and sister.

Keith had been named after my father. He even had my father’s middle name: Basil. I used to say he was named after someone’s favorite spice. Keith was nine when my father left and he took the whole thing pretty hard, spending the ’70s in a kind of extended PTSD episode. In addition, I think my mom put a little too much of that You’re the man of the house now kind of pressure on him. Keith wasn’t made of strong enough stuff to crack under the pressure. He kind of just melted.

Audrey had been named after my mom, but ditched her given name fairly quickly and opted to be called Penny. Which was nonsense. After all, Penny is the diminutive of Penelope. It’s not related to the name Audrey in any way. It was just confusing.

(I later changed my last name, of course, so I don’t have a leg to stand on.)

I was named after my uncle Ken.

And I slid down the chute at nine o’clock in the morning on October 16, 1965. I know this because, out of all the amazing trinkets my mom uncovered in her boxes of memories, she still had my ID bracelet from the hospital. Despite that, however, my mom quickly forgot my 9:00 a.m. arrival time and proceeded to call me and wish me a Happy Birthday during each of my adult years at somewhere around 6:30 a.m. in a conversation that went something like…

Mom

Happy Birthday, my darling boy!

Ken

Mom, it’s six-thirty. You know I was born at nine…right?

Mom

Oh, right. Should I call you back?

Ken

No…I’m up…

Fortunately, as my mom gets older her ability or desire to wake up early has waned and her phone calls have relocated to a more civilized hour.

Mind you, I was called Baby on my ID bracelet. Ken came later on.

I initially preferred Kenny, though the name on my birth certificate, which exists somewhere I’m sure even if we didn’t unearth that artifact, is the much longer and full of itself Kenneth. I tried going by Kenneth for about a month in 2005…it didn’t take.

Throughout the 1970s, though, I went by the name Kenny when it came to all of my friends and family. When I had to sign something, Ken eventually came into play as I grew older and lazier. Kenneth was reserved for those times when my mom was especially mad at me. If I ever heard my mom say Kenneth, I knew I had to think fast or I would get a beating.

My mom was the beating type but don’t judge her too harshly. This was the 1970s. Parents did that kind of thing back then. Usually, my mom used a belt. And all of us kids were familiar with her decisive line, Go get the belt. Sometimes, she’d warn us, You’d better stop it or you’re going to get the belt.

My mom is older now, far too old to really be effective with the belt, so I can safely share with you that she wasn’t particularly good with the belt. Maybe that’s why my brother and sister eventually just laughed it off. I chose a more pragmatic path, however. I decided to let her think the belt worked for just as long as she wanted, which was around sometime in 1978 or ’79. You can only fake tears for so long. Her last beating ended with a look of realization on her face and, like some couple doomed to divorce or counseling, we knew the spark just wasn’t there. But, hey, it kept me from any real punishments.

Besides, I thought it was important to give my mom a break. Even from an early age, I kinda knew she got a rotten deal. And the thing of it was I loved my mom. I mean, I really loved her. I thought she was beautiful and funny and smart and—I didn’t have the words to explain why, especially at such a young age, but I’d try at every opportunity. I’d tell her she was pretty. I’d thank her for her delicious food. Granted, I didn’t know anything about cuisine back then and how much stock would you put into the opinion of a four year old, anyway? All the same, I loved her.

And I felt horrible for her as well. Though I couldn’t say it, my heart went out to her. She would cry herself to sleep at night, every night, for many years after my father left us. I could hear her in bed, across the hall, in the room I shared with Keith. Even with both of the bedroom doors shut, I could hear her. My mom always shut her bedroom door when she cried. Maybe it gave her the illusion of privacy but it was no more than an illusion. We kids could hear everything.

We knew what was going on. We were young but we weren’t stupid. Between the three of us, we’d often have discussions about what would happen to us next. Would mom leave us? Would she put us up for adoption? Would we move back to New Jersey, where my mom’s adopted family lived? Would we lose the house?

On and on…

I was too young to contribute much to such conversations. Mostly, I’d just sit there with terror in my eyes as Keith and Audrey spelled out various doomsday scenarios. I’d hold my Robby the Robot toy and play with its powered wheels or its powered arms or its illuminated head and try to act brave.

Robby the Robot, by the way, was a character who first appeared in the film Forbidden Planet, and was later a regular on the TV show Lost in Space. My toy was not an official Robby the Robot toy but it was close enough that it looked and acted just like Robby the Robot. The tracks on which it rolled were battery powered, the arms moved up and down with a flick of a switch, and the diodes in its clear, plastic head lit up. These features worked so well that I would burn through the batteries, playing with the thing nearly all day. When I burned out my first Robby the Robot toy, my mom somehow bought me a second one, and when you hear about our financial situation you’ll understand how that was a small miracle in itself.

My mom had been employed from a young age and was always good at holding down a job, but the financial situation she was thrown into when my father left was