Balls and Walnuts
more than you ever wanted to know
California dreaming
When my uncle died, the house on Atlantic Boulevard stood vacant save for decades-old furniture, piles of trinkets (in Yiddish, tchotchkes), and garbage of one form or another. My parents wanted to know if there was anything I wanted, so I told them: one thing, only one thing. I wanted my grandfather’s talent agency publicity photo from his time as a failed actor.
I liked Papa better than any of my other grandparents. I suspect he related better to kids than my other grandparents. We had/have similar personalities, too. We’re both dreamers and bullshit artists. We’re both forever imagining riches around the corner. For Papa, it was the breakout acting career, or the properties in Hesperia and Ontario, or (I discovered today, talking to my mother) investments in Long Beach oil. For me, it’s the breakout novel, the movie deal, or (when I’m feeling glum about the writing) a stroke of luck with the lottery.
I pumped my mom for information this morning. She remembered regrettably few details, but she did give me a few interesting tidbits. Papa’s father died in the influenza pandemic of 1918. He lived with his brothers and sister in Lodz, Poland, where his family worked a dairy farm. One by one, the children left and came to America, breaking their mother’s heart.
The rest is conjecture. One thing about Papa, you never could filter the truth from the fable. In one of his favorite stories, two days before his ship pulled in to Ellis Island, he woke up with one leg shorter than the other. This, you may know, would have barred him from entrance to the States. When he told the story, he would delve at great length into the depths of his grief — and he did this to set up the punchline: the next day, he woke up with both legs the same length. As much as he had wallowed in misery a moment earlier, now he rose to stratospheric heights detailing his elation, his relief. Yes, Papa understood that drama requires high stakes and sharp contrasts.
For a while, he worked as a hand on ships that steamed around Tierra Del Fuego. He was a kid at the time, perhaps fourteen or fifteen, and in another of his favorite stories, he made spare money posing nude for a shipboard photographer. He must have visited California during his travels, because he decided early on he would relocate to the West as soon as he could.
But for many years, he lived and worked in Boston. He acted in the local Yiddish Theater — a big deal in those days, something that could bring local and regional fame. But Hollywood loomed as the big prize. I wonder: is that why he wanted to go West, or did the 19th century land-of-opportunity meme thrive even in the 1920s?
He met my grandmother in Boston and they married for God only knows what reason (apparently, even from their early years together, they fought daily). They came to California soon afterward, where Papa worked the late shift in a West Side Jewish bakery. The man made the best rye bread and mandelbrot (Jewish biscotti, harder than granite). He became active in the local theater scene and even performed at the Pasadena Playhouse before my grandmother nixed his hobby. Jealousy, my mother thinks.
You can know the facts of a person’s life and yet have little or no insight into a person’s feelings, his soul. Papa was a fine baker but he didn’t love baking. He loved gardening . . . and acting. How much did he love acting? Look at his publicity photo:
The caption reads, A very fine European Actor — Speaks all Foreign Languages — Has slight accent. And, yes, in the lower lefthand corner, he’s wearing a Nazi uniform. That’s how much he wanted to be an actor.
This was the 1960s. World War II movies still made big box office, so what’s “A very fine European Actor” who “Has slight accent” to do? Play a Nazi, that’s what. No matter that Nazis were (and, of course, still are) anathema to any Jew. No matter that many if not all of his relatives left behind in Poland were now dead, thanks to the Nazis. If wearing a Nazi uniform would cinch his career, he’d put on a swastika and look like one tough bastard.
Lest you think this was the twisted pleasure of an antisemitic talent agent, the opposite side of the publicity photo reads, “Murry Weintraub Agency,” with the phone number, OL 2-3892. Weintraub. Yeah, sure, Jews can be antisemitic (ever see The Man in the Glass Booth?) but I sense cunning, practicality, and above all, a yearning to succeed so intense that nothing else mattered.
His acting career never blossomed, his investments never flourished. He lived out his retirement in the house on Atlantic happily tending his garden — happy, that is, when he wasn’t fighting with my uncle or my grandmother. He refused to take his blood pressure medication, saying he felt just fine without it, thank you; and, predictably, he succumbed to multi-infarct dementia. He died while I was in medical school, alone in a nursing home with no memories, no stories. What a hellish way to go.
I miss him very much.
D.
Please accept my condolences.
My grandpa has a special place in my heart, too. He died in ’77 or ’78 when I was three or four, but I still remember combing his hair for him, and riding to town to get ice cream cones.
I was the last person he drove to town before he died [many prayers for my safety were said that day;-)].
I still remember getting ice cream all over me and falling asleep in the front seat, safe and content, completely unaware that he wasn’t the best driver in the world, and that he was just a few days from going into the hospital for the last time.
It’s funny to think about it now, but he was always so good to me, and to every one else except my mom, he was a grumpy old fart.
My mom told me years later that he asked to see me when he was in the hospital dying. Kids weren’t allowed in the patient rooms back then, and I never got to see him.
Funny that it still hurts to think about that.
I don’t know why he liked me so much, but I still remember that he did, and I miss him, too.
Thanks for writing about your grandpa, Doug, and reminding me of mine.
Thanks, azteclady, and welcome to my blog!
Shelbi, I think grandparents have the potential to be special because the adversarial parent-child thing just isn’t there — all the love of a parent without any of the animus. Thanks for telling me about your grandpa.
My dad’s father is still going strong at 95, and I am very grateful that I’ve been able to both get to know him as an adult and watch him with my own children.
I loved this post – very touching and funny at the same time. The acting card is very funny. He must have been quite a character.
sxKitten, what I learned to late: ask these people all the questions you’re curious about before they’re gone. There are so many things I’d like to ask him now, but as a kid/young adult, I wasn’t that insightful to know what I wanted to know.
Thanks, Sam. Oh, he was a character. As I think I’ve mentioned in the past, when I was really young he would tease me by showing me his bald head, saying, “See the scars? This is where I had the horns.” Very odd joke until you think about some of the old (and I do mean OLD) antisemitic slurs. And then there was the monkey he kept in the attic that he would never show me. Such a BSer.
I recall these agent pictures but not the color photo where he is standing on the porch looking up. That one is a great picture. What you wrote reminds me of how little we know about our grandparents and even our parents. I have every summer to sit down with both our parents and ask away, but something compels me to not do it. Papa was the best BS artist I ever knew.
I love this post. May I link to it from my blog?
Oh, families…
After my grandfather died, my mother found out that he’d been lying about his age by several years. (If I’m remembering correctly, he lied about his age to get into the British Navy, or so we suppose.)
After my grandmother died, my mother found out that she (my mother that is) was adopted. It’s a long, tangled tale that I may tackle on my blog sometime. Oh, and she found out that my grandmother had been adopted, too.
Thanks for linking, CD.
Jim, I’m forever amazed by secrets surfacing decades later. Life is wild.
Yeah, we found out a bunch of stuff about my grandfather after he died, simply by reading his High School Yearbook. Some of the comments and awards he received put a whole new spin on the stories of his early life, which we had accepted just as he told them.
And I’m SURE he never would have copped to the truth, even if he were asked.
Great story, Doug.
[…] Chihuahuas By Walnut My parents’ 60th wedding anniversary is coming up next January, and for the occasion, my sister wants to put together some sort of scrap book. My sister, my brother, and I each have our own collection of photos. It’s always something of a shock when we compare photos. For example, my sis had never seen this photo of my grandfather. […]
I’d like to share two of your entries with my students (10th grade English, Orange Park, FL) as part of our lessons on personal memoir. I’d like to use Klondike and California Dreaming. I would create enough copies for my class-each would include your web address–and would read them together with students. They would not retain the copies and I would only use them in this manner. Is this amenable with you? I hope so. I await your response.
In case you don’t get my email: I’d be honored. But to protect yourself from hordes of angry parents, perhaps you SHOULDN’T give them my URL. Thar be evil on this site . . .
[…] We had our big dinner at Cheesecake Factory. This was fine, actually, and could have been far worse (Olive Garden, anyone?) My brother made a toast: To another sixty years. Earlier, my dad was talking about his WWII medals. “I wonder who will get these when I’m gone.” They mean a lot to him, those medals, but it’s a funny thing what people value. Yeah, I’ve talked about this before. What do I value? Photos. No — stories. If my dad can give me the stories behind the medals, I’ll keep the stories and my brother can keep the medals. […]