musings

May 13, 1966

 

5-13-1966

 

Sandy_edited-1Kathy

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A Catholic priest created the Wutzit Club to keep teen-agers off the streets. In 1966, it was on Newhall Street. It was open Wednesday, Friday and Saturday nights and featured a ballroom, stage, game room, television lounge and snack bar.  Dances were strictly chaperoned and a dress code was enforced. No alcohol – and nobody 21 or older – was allowed. Live mostly local bands performed; Buckingham and Nicks played there in ’68, before Stevie Nicks and Lindsay Buckingham joined Fleetwood Mac. Dues (admission) was fifty cents – a small price to pay for the chance to meet the love of your life.

Screen Shot 2016-05-11 at 12.36.35 PM

wutzit club 1_edited-1

Wutzit Card Back

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

For people like me and my friends, who weren’t part of the Wilcox High “In Crowd,” the Wutzit offered an opportunity to meet non-Wilcox guys who didn’t know we were dorks.  Males massed on the right side of the room. Girls milled on the left and waited for some brave boy to cross the great divide and ask us to dance. Our popularity – which in those days meant success – depended on how many times we danced.  Higher mathematics were not required in my case since it is hard to miscalculate one (1).

Truth at seventeen

At the Wutzit, beauty got you asked to dance. (I suspect being under 5’9” helped but I can’t prove it.)  While it’s true other values – intelligence and persistence – are rewarded in the real world, it’s equally true that real life tends to be easier for those born beautiful.

Today, girls don’t need to wait by the wall. No social stigma attaches if they dance alone or with their friends. I applaud their freedom but can’t help wondering if underlying values changed too.  I hope I’m wrong but I suspect more than a few millennials dancing alone still relate to the words Janis Ian wrote in 1975.%22The valentines....%22

May 10, 1969





May 10 1969

 

S&K_edited-2K&S_edited-1

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I’m not sure if I’m revealing myself (and – guilting my best friend Sandy Hegwood Walker by association) as a typical high-spirited high-school girl or a pathological liar. In our defense, we didn’t distort the truth for an unfair advantage – we just couldn’t resist any opportunity to try on a new identity. An only child, Sandy’s fantasy life and active imagination meshed perfectly with mine. We were naturals when it came to playing off each other and improvising.  We had our own secret language for awhile, but that was kids stuff. When we matured, so to speak, pretending to be aspiring rock stars was one of our favorite gambits. When we really got it going, we could go into elaborate detail about our set list and who sang lead on what song. I’m surprised we never got around to printing up band cards. (But what if somebody wanted to book us?)

This fantasy sounded so cool Sandy and I struggled through a few guitar lessons  before we realized our talents were better suited to shopping for dramatic stage costumes, not learning to play an instrument. Years of piano lessons, during which I fell progressively further behind my younger sisters, had alerted me keyboards might not be my forte. My next hint I might be musically challenged came when our church choir director eliminated my half of an upcoming duet with the lame excuse a Natalie Nilsen solo served the music better. I told myself she just didn’t want to show preferential treatment to the pastor’s daughter but I was devastated. While I didn’t want to “toot my own horn,” I didn’t want to hide my light under a bushel either.

I took my case to my father. “I have a beautiful voice, don’t I?” I asked.

He paused and said, “Kathleen, we all have different gifts.”

Even I couldn’t spin this response. So what if I’d never be a real life rock’n’roll icon? Thanks to Sandy’s and my living theater, I knew how it felt to strut the stage and blast away on my Stratocaster. Just to prove that sometimes fantasies do come true, Sandy’s parents bought her a drum kit which she housed in a black light room. It didn’t get much better than that.

If you’re worried about all the gullible people we deceived, rest easy – I don’t think we fooled anyone.

 

May 8, 1968

IMG_20160504_0001

May 8 1968

Girls Swimming

I’m not sure today’s millennials could survive the sixties high school experience. While searching for a photo of the frigid Wilcox High swimming pool, I unearthed an impressive array of “Mermen” shots – but this was the sole illustration of girls in the water. (I’m so disappointed I couldn’t show you the hideous dark green maillots we wore.)  In fact, this was the only photo I found depicting girls in any athletic endeavor. Based on my Wilcox yearbooks, athletics and team sports were a “Men Only” preserve – not that my consciousness was high enough to perceive this slight at the time. Until I sought a photo for this blog, I never noticed the omission. Although Friedan’s Feminine Mystique was  published in 1963, feminism wasn’t on my radar.

In addition to an outdoor pool in the dead of winter, the class of ’69 was the last to be subjected to a dress code – which meant girls wore dresses every day. If your hem failed to skim the floor when a teacher ordered you to kneel, you were sent home to change. Once a year – on “Grub Day” – girls were allowed to wear pants to school. The top photo of me with the rest of the Literary Magazine staff illustrates typical Wilcox style. For the epitome of high school fashion, see the photo below of the pair my class voted “Best Dressed”.

Best Dressed

High school has loomed large in my writing career and I will revisit aspects of my experience in future diary-blogs. If you recognize yourself in a photo, please tag it!

Class Picture

 

If I knew then – May 3, 1966

 

Diary May 3, 1966_edited-1

When I was fifteen, a year was an eternity – long enough for me to become “a completely different person”.  I’ve always had a morbid inclination to nostalgia. Upon turning ten years old, my diary entry lamented the fact my age would never be a single digit again.  In this entry, I mournfully reflect on where I was less than eleven months ago – “Gone forever, now.” (Or was this a premonition? True Fact: Jefferson Jr. High is literally gone forever, now, razed to build office buildings.)

Time accelerated as I aged. I wish years still crawled like they did when I was fifteen but instead they fly. Preferring Paul McCartney to Mark Lindsay is no longer grounds to dissolve a friendship.

One thing remains the same – my fascination (some might use the word obsession) with the past. Why else would I blog about old diary entries?

It was a thrill to connect with a few other people (Rebecca Dormire LaRussa and Robin Rutan Russell) who lived through the momentous election of 1964 (not Goldwater-Kennedy, the Jefferson Junior High election for student body officers.) This could never happen without Facebook; the fact that it happened so easily, with my very first diary-blog, reassures me this effort is worth it. With luck, I’ll connect with other people whose paths crossed mine. (Hopefully, these diary entries won’t hurt anyone’s feelings. I could be a catty little bitch in the privacy of my diary.)

 

If I Knew Then…. 4/30/64

IF I KNEW THEN… April 30, 1964

On this day in 1964, I was a seventh grade dork, running for Class Secretary.

April 30 1964

 

No vote

 Although I knew that I would lose, I hoped for a miracle. Alas, it was not to be. When the ballots were tallied, Robin was the new Class Secretary and I was the unpopular loser. All of my construction-paper campaign posters, the hours devoted to honing my speech, came to naught. My life would be forever tainted by this humiliating loss.

Another moment in time I didn't think I would survive.
Another moment in time I didn’t think I would survive.

But guess what? If I listed my top hundred terrible, tragic experiences, this crushing defeat wouldn’t make it. It might not make the top two hundred. The ache in my gut and crying jags didn’t last a week. In less than a month, it just didn’t matter that I wasn’t elected 8th grade Class Secretary.  While it’s true I never campaigned for anything again, that’s not much of a loss – for me or mankind. The day it happened it hurt like hell, but it just wasn’t important in the overall scheme of my life.

I have been blessed with so much in my life.
I have been blessed with so much in my life.

I’ll try to remember this next time I lose something I desperately want and can’t live without. The truth is, I will survive. I’m still here. And before I know it, it just won’t matter.

My Top Secret Diary

This will be my format for upcoming blog posts. Once or twice a week, I’ll post a diary entry from between 1964 and the present, a photo if I can find one, and my thoughts on what it all meant given the benefit of hindsight. Diary selections will correspond to the date the blog is posted, but will not be chronological. I have thousands of hand-written diary entries – I might as well use them for something.

 

 

51 YEARS BETWEEN CHAD & JEREMY CONCERTS



Clippings

My diary entry for February 21, 1965 (the two clippings above were pasted into the diary.) In my defense, I was only 13 years old.

Diary 2-21-1965

Not only was I overly fond of exclamation points, in ’65 my life was a long seriously bad hair day. (See 8th grade school picture below, taken on what I then believed to be a good hair day.)  

School Picture

But I digress. Last night – slightly more than 51 years after their performance at the Hyatt Music Theater, I saw Chad and Jeremy at McCabe’s guitar store in Santa Monica – a considerably smaller and calmer venue.  No one fainted during their highly entertaining show which included renditions of two of my favorite Chad and Jeremy songs – “A Summer Song” and “Distant Shores”.  Here they are on stage. Sorry about the bad photo – our cell phones were supposed to be off.

C&J Concert

Even though we saw the second show, which started at 10 PM and didn’t end until midnight, they stuck around afterwards to talk to fans and sign autographs. I got one too.

Concert4

C&JConcert3

Music is the closest I’ll get to time travel. When familiar – usually melancholy – chords cast their spell, 51 years dissolve. Contrary to the title of Chad and Jeremy’s first USA hit, yesterday is never gone. Long buried memories and feelings spring to life. My world-weary adult self morphs into the yearning dork I used to be. How much of a dork? Another diary entry from 1965.

Diary 1965_edited-1

As angst-ridden as I was at 13, I miss the passionate highs and lows. Where did all that intensity go?

I didn’t scream deliriously at last night’s show like I did in 1965, but I remembered how it felt. Exhilarating. 1965 was a very good year.

song

As long as there’s music, I don’t have to say goodbye to anything.  If a band you used to love passes anywhere near your town, it’s definitely worth the trip.

 

Losing You

%22Love%22

Losing You_edited-1
 Randy Newman “Losing You”

Introducing his brilliant song “Losing You”, Randy Newman explains it was inspired by parental grief at losing a son.  While it’s far more typical and expected for children to lose their parents, the lyric speaks to me. My mother was ninety years and four months old when she died on Saturday, March 12th. Assuming I live as long, there still won’t be enough time to get over losing Geneva Alayne Knutsen.

This is not to imply she was a saint or that our relationship was perfect. If anything, as the eldest daughter – and the one who most clearly carries her genetic profile – I was a miniature version of her and her expectations of herself were high. I know because she shared every one of them with me – a lot.

As a rebellious adolescent, I fought to quiet her voice. Smile. Be friendlier. Ugh, look at those fingernails! You’ve gained weight. You’d look so much prettier with a little make-up. Is that what you’re wearing to church? Nobody likes to vacuum, Kathleen, but we all have to do things we don’t like to do. You’d better get rich or marry rich because you’re going to need a maid. Straighten your shoulders. Smile.

It was enough to drive a sensitive soul crazy. It was more than enough to obscure the motivation behind these advisory bulletins. I heard a meddling mother picking on me, I didn’t see it was her love for me overflowing – far too much love to maintain a respectful distance.

She got too close; we bruised each other. We disappointed. I said things I regret; I carelessly broke a few of her dreams because they weren’t mine. We hurt each other. You’d think I couldn’t wait to escape her voice but it was never an option. Her voice is my voice as my face holds her face.

Beneath the admonitions – Smile. Be friendlier. Straighten your shoulders – lives the real message, flowing like a river. I love you, I love you, I love you. I want the world for you. You’re my world. She’s the enduring voice and breath in my world. How could I ever get over losing her?

Sunday at Forest Lawn

 

2016-02-21 14.39.19

 

Today would have been my father’s 90th birthday.  To celebrate and remember him, my sisters and our children freed my mother (also 90) from the assisted nursing facility where she now resides for an afternoon outing to Forest Lawn.

I’d passed this road many times before when my Dad sat behind the wheel. We’d be driving home from a Lakers or Dodgers game and suddenly he’d detour down Forest Lawn Drive to point out an empty plot he called “our retirement home”.  Perched on a hill under a sprawling oak, it featured a view of a little white church not unlike the rural Iowa parish of his youth.  Usually, there was a cool breeze.

He talked about it like other people talk about vacation resorts. He’d heard good things and looked forward to seeing for himself.  No fears, no regrets. An eternal optimist, he expected even this final destination to exceed his expectations. He smiled like a young boy driving toward Disneyland, not a man in the winter of his life contemplating a field of tombstones.

At the time, my sisters and I were a little creeped out by these macabre drives past his future grave. At the time, the concept of a world without him was simply unthinkable.  Intellectually I knew all things come to an end but aren’t there exceptions to every rule? To me, he was so much larger than life that surely he could beat death too.

I was wrong. He did not.

Eleven months after we tossed dirt and flowers into open earth on that knoll, I still can’t accept that he’s gone. I wait for signs and look for portents, tangible proof he hasn’t really left us.

My sister had a dream last week.  Shaky writing appeared on a blank piece of paper. It spelled out:

I LOVE YOU. I  AM IN GOD’S CARE

I choose to believe.

Vance1

39 Years Ago Yesterday

My obsession with nostalgia, my love for all that’s past and lost to me forever, started the day I turned ten and realized, with aching heart, that my age would never again be a single digit.

 

Since then, I’ve mourned the passing of many more ages I will never be again. Still, my brain refuses to acknowledge that I’m a day over 39.  Consequently, it was more than a little traumatic when my oldest son turned 39 yesterday. Isn’t that a medical impossibility?

 

In my dreams, my adult children are always little kids. I long to be with them at five and six again. If I could live my life over, I’d appreciate all the small moments more. Or would I?

 

I recently read The Strange Life of Ivan Osokin by P.D. Ouspensky. Ivan suffers agonizing regret about letting alcohol and laziness ruin his life. He’s certain he’d make wiser choices if given a second chance. He meets a magician who enables him to do exactly that. However, despite Ivan’s full knowledge of the catastrophic results of his prior self-indulgence, he makes the same disastrous decisions.

 

I’d like to believe I’m more self-aware than Ivan but maybe I wouldn’t do it better even if I could do it over. Still, I’d do anything to find out. If Time Travel was an option, I’d be first in line. Unfortunately, despite myriad books and movies suggesting time travel might be real and imminent in my lifetime, my husband informs me due to, uh, reality, it will in fact never be possible in anybody’s lifetime. This is a major disappointment.

 

In order to preserve as much of the past as possible, I’ve filled hundreds of journals with diary entries dating back to 1963. I’ll share some less humiliating entries on my domain next year. I’m traveling over Christmas, so this is probably my last blog in 2015 (say goodbye to another opportunity, forever lost) – but I wish anyone who’s read this far a happy holiday and spectacular New Year.

kcdrairshowmakeover


 K & CD2

Forgetting Who I Am

 

Am I the only person this happens to?

  • I read an article about an intense boot camp for dieters where they are forced to exercise all day long and think to myself, “What a great idea! I’ll sign up!” I’ve forgotten who I am.
  • I’m captivated by a jewelry display and reach for my credit card to buy a necklace. I do not wear jewelry because it irritates my skin. I’ve forgotten who I am.
  • I buy an adorable tennis outfit that looks great on me. I have not played tennis since the seventh grade, when I wore my Jr. High PE uniform. I’ve forgotten who I am.

Does this happen to you? When?