Where Have All The Flowers Gone?

PAUL REVERE AND THE RAIDERS WERE ALWAYS PLAYING ON THE '67 MUSTANG FASTBACK'S RADIO AND WE WERE ALWAYS DRIVING FAST TO IT, WHILE THE SONG "KICKS" ROCKED ON 93 KHJ AM RADIO LOS ANGELES.

I remember the air was covered in gray smog and it was hotter than hell and I was so glad to be getting out of Arcadia for a few days in the relative cool of Palos Verdes.

I recall my aunts, all Marlo Thomas, "That Girl" look a likes always singing and dancing to the Doors, "Light My Fire". 

I thought they were so cool and beautiful and I was proud to be in public with them and the appreciative looks they got from the James Bond, wavy haired swains that seemed to greet us everywhere we went. I drank in their wonderful scents of Aqua Net, Yardley and marveled at the length of their false eye lashes.

I remember being so grateful to spirits for getting me out of the dreadful heat of Arcadia, even just for a few days. The summer air that summer actually stank of pollution from the never ending smog that hung over the L.A. basin like a wet shroud. Palos Verdes would be cool and there was the beach!

I HEARD SHARON'S NAME BEING SAID OFTEN ....AND WONDERED WHO "SHARON", WAS.

Then by chance, I came across "The Los Angeles Times “newspaper and on the front page was the picture of a very beautiful woman. It was then did I know what was meant by such a statement.

That summer was unbearably stifling, not just the heavy heat but the heavy, angry attitude that my over 40 year old parents always seemed to be in. In just getting away from their dark looks and strident manner would be a godsend in and of itself.

 

This continual anger seemed to have building for over a year. Ever since the last summer in ’68 that weird Saturday that none of my cartoon shows were on.

 “SHAZAM” was my favorite and so were the “WACKY RACES” with Mutley and Penelope Pitstop;

 they weren’t on because a day long and ever fascinating news report, on all of the TV stations were showing a funeral train and big church service for someone named Robert F. Kennedy.

And this was the first time that nobody was home that day. I was all alone, in my parent’s bedroom watching all of this unfold on an old Zenith mahogany on Sputnick wooden legs television set. What made all of this was so trippy was that the picture tube was green so I saw everything unfold on a green and white screen.

At the time I wore my hair like Peter Brady and dressed like him too, except when I was in my St. Rita’s Catholic School uniform.

I was looking out one of the huge plate glass picture windows that faced the Pacific Ocean from aunt’s mid-century modern hillside home, when Eyewitness News channel 7 blasted the news about Cielo Drive.

It was then that pop music emanated from my cousin’s room, all jingly percussion wafting down hallway. It was a song from “20/20” which earlier that day we had bought together at local record store. Little did we know that a musician and songwriter name Charles Manson had written a really good song that appeared on this album called, “Never Learn Not to Love”. However, I think that issued later…still…weird.

 

The Cielo Drive news was scary and something primal in me needed safety, so I asked my aunt to please give me a haircut. She smiled at me and was only too glad to oblige.

This new look, of clean cut young America made feel better and somehow even safer from a violent and potentially fatal, world.

Funny but wildflowers forever made me think of Sharon.

Another thing that was weird was watching President Nixon going on television admonishing the younger generation’s state of morals by citing by example, what had transpired on Cielo Drive that past August.

And why did I keep hearing the movie title, “Rosemary’s Baby” being used in connection with Sharon Tate and a funny sounding last name going after, “Tate”…that of, ”Polanski”?

My aunts used to talk, big teased hair heads together, about this spooky, vaguely Satanic story that seemed to threaten our very 50’s conservative family lifestyle.

I knew that I felt all of this ricochet fragmentation fallout nearly every day of that summer of 1969 going into the year 1970. Partly this was because I felt acutely, a curious imbalance of family feeling in myself. One part of me couldn’t care less of our family dynamic and or conforming to its pressures. My warring side, the side that is attracted to conflict, felt rejected because my favorite aunt didn’t include me, but did include my brother, in her wedding party which luck would have it was the week-end following the Tate massacre.

 I remember she kept asking me to ask the little rock band playing their reception in our backyard, “Light My Fire’, over and over again.

 

Around 4 pm that Saturday, the combination of the one hundred degree day, the excitement of the wedding and all the champagne an eight year old could swill,  caught up with me and I succumbed to being violently ill on the patio and promptly passed out in the arms of the laughing, burly black guy hired to help out with reception.

Another reason for all of this family disconnect was the fact that within our Catholic church, a serious differing of progressive opinion was dividing the church in two.

I remember it was a huge deal the day the nun’s habit changed from a starched white collar and winged hat and became a Chanel chic polished cotton shift with a touch of starched white linen at the round collar and bracelet length sleeves. To complete this new drag was a little cotton and linen head covering fashioned like a head scarf allowing their bangs to show.

 If they had worn this with patent leather flats and carried a quilted leather bag with a gold chain strap, pearls at their neck, the nuns could have looked appropriately attired for lunch at Le Cote Basque or The Colony with Jackie and Lee and Babe and Slim.

The really threatening aspect to all of this change was in the music being played at St. Rita’s. I loved singing with the nuns and my schoolmates, the Byrd’s, “Turn, Turn, Turn” but wondered why the congregation and especially my parents reacted with an ice cold fury to this lovely pop rock ballad.

You do the math…

 

Around this time San Francisco was experiencing terror from “The Zodiac Killer” and as this was my aunt and new uncle’s honeymoon destination, I was absolutely terrified that the ‘Zodiac” killer would get her because her birthday made her a Leo and naturally her being in Frisco would make her his next target.

So I bought her a plastic Jesus figurine from the St. Rita’s gift shop and gave it to her for a wedding gift which she seemed to like.

It was small enough to fit on the vinyl dashboard of their new Datsun 240 Z, so at least she would always have my gift to remind her of me and that I loved and cared about her.

 I felt I had done my spiritual duty to protect her with this Christian good luck charm and keep the nutty Zodiac guy away from her.

 

I didn’t grow up in a traditional “ All American” household at all in that when my grandmother and my aunt’s lived with us, it was old school Spanish Latin Catholic all the way. Much to my parents and my siblings frustration but I loved it! For one reason, it kept my red faced, permanently pissed off dad far away from me, for a while. This meant my grandmother “ruled the roost”.

 Which also meant, while she was at home, she protected me from my rather hostile to my person, family.

So it was a life where my grandmother mostly raised me keeping my anger disordered pop at arm’s length from me. That meant a ton of fun could be had in such a potentially negatively charged situation. That lady loved to express her sense of humor, on a regular basis. She was more “Hazel” than “Endora”.

 She had the very natural for Latin’s, enjoyment for dark humor and horror that could also be really fun to hear about; like the pleasure of a good ghost story. That is, if a kid can have a ball being scared-which I did, in a Mexican horror movie scared kind of way.

Like her version of Grimm’s Fairy Tales could have been called “Abelita’s Great Big Golden Book of L.A. Murders”. There was the “Black Dahlia” of course but also terrifying tales like the little bank president’s daughter 1920’s kidnapping and mutilation murder story and the little boy who got attacked in the public restroom ( the less said more about that one, the better). I don’t know why she delighted in telling me these tales of terror, but you know what?

I loved them!

 Except for those murder and war stories that seemed to be reported and commented on endlessly, which I heard and even enjoyed to a point, my grandmother didn’t tell me fairy tales, she told me real life news stories. These included tales of Vietnam, The Seven Days War in Israel circa 1967 and of course “The Zodiac Killer” and what would then become to be known as the “Manson Murders”. Now all of this violence seemed to be familiar to me because of the tensions exploding all around me.

 Talk about shell shocked- if my parents weren’t constantly arguing with each other and my dad’s squabbling family, who lived with us, then they were endlessly grounding, well… me. Then going to Catholic school in the late 1960’s afforded me the insight that some people HATED Catholics, so our school was receiving a plethora of bomb threats in which it seemed like I was out of school at least once a week, not counting saints and religious holidays.

At about this point no one knew I had ADHD Dyscalculia, which made learning math, science and grammar nearly impossible for me, so my parents started to get furious with St. Rita’s lack for anything but asking for dough, most of which seemed to go into the budget of building their gorgeous new, modern architecturally styled church.

 I remember even as a little tike, that this was one humdinger of a dramatic church. I mean it has soaring vistas and sweeping planes and is all about steeply set angles…wow!

Channel Seven, there’s that Channel Seven again, popped up with a movie slot called “The Three Thirty Movie” which seemed to employ a programmer who adored really wildly strange Elizabeth Taylor movies from the late Sixties to the early Seventies. One of my favorites was “BOOM!”

 A story that I didn’t fully understand as a tot but I zeroed in on how all the white architecture reminded me of St. Rita’s and I do have to hand it to the nuns; they seemed to have had an inside track on how one is “chosen” from above to do great or at least, interesting things and don’t fit the profile for success. They sure knew their “Song of Bernadette”. I only mention this because they were swell to me when they saw I had a natural talent for drawing. On the occasion of my second grade “Parent Teacher Night”, they commissioned me to draw “The Resurrection” in Sister Jean Marie’s second grade classroom. This exercise effectively allowed me to skip a lot of pesky homework.

 My grandmother was almost surgically attached to this plastic contraption, which she referred to as her “boyfriend “and played a radio station from Los Angeles called, KWKW.

This station always seemed to be on all the time. When even this audio assault became too much for even her, she grumble loudly, “Oh that terrible QUE DIABLO, QUE DIABLO - I keep forgetting to turn it off!”

This time zone was a very curious way of life; like living in a warzone, what with the family strife and threat of ever impending doom that was all around me all of the time.

Years later while watching “Forbidden Planet”, I was struck with the image of the terrible “Id” running amuck, articulating man’s subconscious fear and need for conflict blahblahblah.

But…this “Id” thing back when I was kid and even up to the present, seems to be a presence that I still feel within and around me when I get one of those creepy vibes that something isn’t right in the world.

The Sharon Tate connection seemed to touch a lot of people living Los Angeles at that time. I was at a wedding about twelve years ago and the bride’s maid of honor actually knew Sharon Tate. Now how or why Sharon’s name was even brought up, probably most likely by me, I do not remember but what I do recall is that her name still has the power to level a room. Not as a social faux pas, more in that special way those names like, “Titanic’ or “Cleopatra” can stir up high octane feelings.

END OF PART ONE

© 2012 Richard Lloreda All Rights Reserved