What's in a Story?

The burnt VW Beetle where Gordon Miller's body was found in 1964. PHOTO: ASSOCIATED PRESS

We shall not cease exploration

And the end of all our exploring

Will be to arrive where we started

And know the place for the first time

                                    -- T.S. Eliot

Earlier this month I wrote about the late Joan Didion and her influence as a chronicler of culture and a model for writers. A friend of mine from high school who has more time on his hands now that he's retired from dentistry and coaching college rugby -- time enough to even read my blog -- became intrigued by Didion. One of her books, The White Album, published in 1979, had been taking space on his bookshelf for years, but never opened.

His mother who was an English teacher gave him the book sometime during the 80s. "I never read books. I didn't have time," he said. She sent him a book every year for his birthday. He's kept every one of them.

He sent me a text with a photo of Didion's book and the message: 

"Here goes!" He was about to finally read it.

It's been nearly 60 years since we hung out together. Life changes us. I wondered if he would like the book? For one thing, it's a book of essays from the 1970s, dated material. For another, Joan Didion's perspective and phrasing do not constitute a page turner, more indicative of a writer's rock star, a provocative voice in the jungle.

Yesterday I received a call from my friend Wayne, who had already informed me that he was loving her book. "Her essays involve places in Los Angeles during a time when I was going to school there. Very interesting," he said.

I was glad to hear that but the first thing on my mind was football, a mutual interest that we had in high school. Did you watch football this weekend?" the first thing I asked.

"No, the power has been out since Friday," he said. "The Santa Ana winds knocked it out, uprooted trees, cars were smashed. So no football. We're supposed to get power back tonight (Sunday)." 

He lives in Claremont, about 35-miles east of downtown Los Angeles, along the corridor of the San Gabriel Mountain Range where high desert winds blow in from the Great Basin. Didion wrote stories set amid this regional landscape in a couple of her essays.

"I'm texting you an article from the LA Times about a woman who was a subject in one of Didion's pieces. You've got to read it," he said. The original story involved a murder that happened in nearby Alta Loma.

"Was she upset?" I asked.

I referred to one of Didion's most quoted lines about the real-life characters in her stories: "I will sell you out," she wrote. She understood the adverse commercial aspects of the press, especially when dealing with the subject of murder and people's often fragile lives. 

"No, she's not upset. It's very interesting, a fascinating story."

I found the Times article, under the heading: "I thought Joan Didion's essay would ruin my life. But something else happened."

The piece was written by Debra Miller, whose mother was convicted of murdering her husband -- Debra's father. Debra referred to the case as "one of the most infamous murder trials in California history."

Debra was 14 at the time. Upon her mother's conviction, Debra sprang to her feet in the courtroom and yelled, "She didn't do it! She didn't do it!" This scene was recounted in Didion's essay, which was entitled "Some Dreamers of the Golden State."

Didion compared the upwardly mobile Miller family to the dream-seeking Joad family in Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath, both of whom sought fulfillment in California. The Joad's were from Oklahoma in the 1930s, the Miller's from Oregon nearly 50 years later, and they were real folks as contrasted with Steinbeck's novel. 

Lucille Miller spent seven years in prison before being paroled for the murder of her husband, Gordon Miller, a dentist. The coincidences of the murder happening while we were in high school in the same area where we were living, and that he became a practicing dentist, were not lost by my friend. 

The Miller's marriage had been unraveling among other difficulties. She hated Didion's portrayal of her life and taught her three children to despise Didion. Debra spent a good part of her life hiding from the essay, embarrassed and ashamed, even as she became a high school teacher who taught writing. 

A turning point came during Debra's teaching career when Didion's essay was introduced as a topic for a fellow teacher's English class. She re-read the essay several times and realized the truth in Didion's piece. "She was spot on... She was a genius," wrote Debra in her recent piece. 

She penned a letter to Didion explaining how the essay had affected her life, up until then mostly negatively. 

Didion wrote back:

"There's no real way to tell you how moved I was (am) by your letter... As a writer I tend to compartmentalize the people and events I've written about -- the writer goes in, tries to understand the story, as if the act of writing it down completed the situation, became the truth. I guess I think writers need to do this, have to do this to maintain the nerve to write anything at all. But of course it's an illusion." She thanked Debra for her letter.

Eventually Debra met Joan Didion at a public reading of her then-latest novel where the author, in a moment of compassion, "threw her arms around" Debra.

In her recent piece, Debra reveals the hardships of her life, including drug addiction, and how she was finally able to find release and peace through Didion's essay. Debra's personal observations of her mother while in prison -- not a model prisoner -- and afterward, changed her mind regarding her mother's innocence. 

Debra began to include Didion's essay in her classes, acknowledging that she was the young girl in the piece, opening herself to questions.

The recent death of Joan Didion was a personal loss to Debra. "I would not be the woman I am today," she wrote — “a woman to tell her own story, who survived and flourished rather than succumb to the darkness that consumed my mother and beckoned me."

She expressed confidence that she was ready to write her now memoir.

My musing about Joan Didion led to my friend Wayne picking up her book, an unopened gift from his mother nearly 40 years ago. Being of curious mind, Wayne was intellectually stimulated by reading Didion's work, enough so that he found the above story by Debra Miller fascinating and had to let me know. He and I both are fathers of three daughters, although his are much younger than mine. We are particularly moved by stories about female empowerment. I know this because he said he was going to share this piece with his daughters.

What goes around comes around. 

Thanks Wayne.

Skin in the Game

Jimmy G will lead the 49ers against the Pack on Saturday Night

What do Los Angeles, 

San Francisco, Cincinnati, Buffalo and Kansas City have in common?

If you answered "nothing," you are 99-percent correct.

On a scale that measures employment opportunities, unvaccinated citizenry or numbers of E-bikes flying down the road, you will find wide discrepancies. Especially this time of year.

If you said, "fanatics," you hit the jackpot!

Make that football fanatics who will prove their lunacy this weekend.

I hid Tampa Bay from the above list to avoid the obvious. And besides,Tom Brady fans and non-fans are all over the map.

Even COVID will take a backseat to NFL Playoff Weekend with eight teams banging heads while their fans scream, pound their chests and enact a weird human ritual that will take our minds off of pandemic overload, personal problems and political fatigue.

Sports are our last bastion of agreed upon winners and losers, my friend Glenn pointed out to me recently. There are no disputes when the game ends and the score is posted. Reality prevails.

This weekend, football will play the role of savior and prove that America really is united by our love for the polyhedron-shaped leather spheroid known as the pigskin. 

In 1906, Bradbury Robinson of St Louis University had no idea of the significance of his act when he threw the first forward pass ever recorded in a football game. Or maybe he was prescient and did know the omnipotent power of a spiral.

For years I didn’t watch football. I hated football. Football represented everything that is wrong with our country, especially professional football with its meglomaniacal team owners who exploit our modern-day gladiators for profit and prestige.

Football is a thinly veiled form of blood-sport that makes diminutive white men wealthy, so clubbish that they would not allow one of their own, a pucker-lipped pissant with the initials D.T., to own a team of his own.

Consider that a three-plus hour football game contains only 10-minutes and 43 seconds of real action, according to a Wall Street Journal study. "The rest is fill, the Styrofoam peanuts in between: commercials, replays, coaching, huddling, officials muddling" and broadcasters prattling away with obviously stock remarks and commentary.

So will I be watching football this weekend?

You bet I will.

Because my team, the San Francisco Forty-Niners -- who are actually headquartered and play their home games in Santa Clara -- will enter the icy tundra Church of Lambeau in sub-freezing Green Bay on Saturday night against the storied Green Bay Packers, the only publicly owned NFL team in America, whose shareholders wear crowns of cheese on their heads, the numero uno seeded team in the NFC.

I really don't care who my error-prone Niners will face, but the frigid weather and the wily Green Bay quarterback, Aaron Rodgers, who misrepresented his COVID immunity, will make the battle more... interesting.

When I was a lad, I was all about football. I collected football cards of players like Dick "Night Train" Lane of the Detroit Lions and Willie "The Wisp" Galimore of the Chicago Bears. I begged my father to take me to the Rams games at the Los Angeles Coliseum so I could see my favorite player, Jon Arnett, run with the ball. I played football from elementary school through high school. Until it broke my heart, which is another story.

The elusive Jon Arnett, 1957

It took years before I was lured back to football by the San Francisco Forty-Niners with Joe Montana, Dwight Clark, Ronnie Lott and Jerry Rice.

In 1995, I watched Steve Young lead the Niners to Super Bowl victory over the San Diego Chargers at a sports bar in Capitola with California's esteemed U.S. Senator Alan Cranston also in attendance.

Yes, this weekend I will be among the millions of Americans -- my fellow football fanatics-- who will be watching and hollering about pigskin action -- and inaction -- in our homes, in stadiums and taverns across the land.

Because I have skin in the game. And win or lose I will accept the results.

As of Saturday morning the spread is Packers -5.5. The Pack are 8-0 at home. 

Forty-Niners are 5-1 against the spread in their last six games; 7-3 overall on the road.

Go Niners!

 

It Seems Like Yesterday

Dobie and Maynard

A rush of nostalgia washed over me recently with news of the passing of several cultural icons who were part of my life, albeit their influence was virtual since the space between me and them was a screen. Or, in one case, airwaves.

We like to think that our iPhones and social media have prompted a new reality when, in fact, most folks of my generation grew up with neighbors on their television sets.

A quick look around the TV block and I see the Nelson family -- Ozzie, Harriet, David and Ricky. Around the corner, Wally and Beaver sit in an upstairs bedroom, big brother giving the Beav a life lesson.

I'll never forget Spin demonstrating to Marty how to treat a pair of new Levis by kicking them around the corral in the dirt before slipping them on. For the uninitiated, Spin and Marty were a spinoff (pun intended) from the Mickey Mouse Club.

And what baby-boomer mother did not have a crush on Dobie Gillis? Played by Dwayne Hickman, Dobie posed as a 17-year-old heart-stricken teenager with huge crush on Thalia Menninger, played by the blonde, avaricious beauty, Tuesday Weld.

"He's very cute," said my mother about Dobie, who was actually in his mid--to-late twenties. His dark hair was dyed blonde to give him a more "cornfed" appeal, according to Dwayne Hickman's obituary in the New York Times this week. He died of Parkinson complications. He was 87

Besides the fetching Tuesday Weld, The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis introduced America to Bob Denver, as Maynard G. Krebs, the lovable Beatnik, or television's version thereof. This was BH, before hippies. Whenever employment was mentioned, Maynard flinched. "Work!" he would cry. And we all laughed. Denver would go on to make a name on Gilligan's Island.

Dobie carried the distinction of playing the first angst-ridden teenager in a television series, albeit his angst was softer than that of a Shark or a Jet a la the currently-revived musical, West Side Story, of the same era. His obituary called the show "quietly subversive" since it was presented from the viewpoint of a teenager, beginning each episode with a Dobie monologue next to a replica of Rodin's "Thinker."

Sheila James (Kuehl) played Zelda Gilroy, a brainiac who had the hots for Dobie. She later became the first openly gay person elected to the California State Legislature.

Others who were part of the prodigious cast: Warren Beatty, Ellen Burstyn, Mel Blanc, Ron Howard, Michael J. Pollard and Steve Franken as the flamboyant Chatsworth Osborne Junior.

Hickman's acting career ended early, due to his indelible image of being Dobie. He couldn't shake it. The name was essentially tattooed on his smiling face. His career transitioned behind the scenes as a studio executive.

My personal connection with Dobie Gillis was a yellow pull-over shirt with a diagonal stripe across the front, purchased for me by my mother. The label proclaimed it a Dobie Gillis edition. RIP Dwayne Hickman.

The Ronette's, Ronnie far left

Ronnie Spector, lead singer of the female trio The Ronette's, died this week at age 78 from cancer. Known for their ground-breaking hit, "Be My Baby" in 1963, the group, led by Ronnie's powerful voice and unabashed sexuality, including heavy mascara and short tight skirts, signaled a new direction for women in rock music. In addition, the song was arranged by Phil Spector who introduced what was known as the "wall of sound" to rock arrangements.

When Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys first heard "Be My Baby" he cried tears of discouragement. "I'll never produce anything as good as that," he reportedly told his girlfriend. Wilson was the genius behind the Beach Boys, their arranger, songwriter and leader. 

The Ronettes shared touring bills with the Rolling Stones in the 1960s. Listening to them warm-up backstage, the Stone's Keith Richards said of the group, announcing their induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame: "They could sing all the way through a wall of sound. They didn't need anything."

The Times obituary called Ronnie Spector a "touchstone for women in rock music, from Chrissie Hyde of the Pretenders to Amy Winehouse."

Veronica "Ronnie" Bennett was married to Phil Spector following their initial big hits. She endured an abusive, turbulent relationship with Spector who was sentenced to prison in 2003 for the murder of a woman at this home. He died last year at 81.

Ronnie continued to record and play music although never equaling her early fame. In 1986, her duet with Eddie Money, "Take Me Home Tonight," reached No. 4 on the Billboard chart.

"I'm just a girl from the ghetto who wanted to sing," she said in 2007. RIP Ronnie Spector.

Sidney Poitier receives the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Barack Obama,  2009.

Actor Sidney Poitier died this week at age 94, the first Black performer to win an Academy Award as Best Actor for his role in the movie, Lillies of the Field. Anyone who was alive in the U.S. between 1963 and beyond will have heard of him. He needs no introduction, but he deserves a huge "thank you" from all of us.

Born in Miami and raised in the Bahamas, Poitier knew hardship and poverty early. It's difficult to believe that at one time his spoken English was barely understandable. For me, his clear, elegant, velvety voice is the first memory that comes to mind.

He won a place in acting school by serving as the theater's janitor without pay. His big break came when fellow student Harry Belafonte missed a rehearsal and Poitier filled in. 

He was criticized by more militant advocates of the Civil Rights Movement for being too sanguine. He represented peaceful integrationist roles in his film career, especially in the 1967 films In the Heat of the Night and Guess Who's Coming to Dinner. In 2009 President Barack Obama presented Poitier with the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Other luminaries who died this week include actor Robert Saget, 67, and U.S. Senator Harry Reid, 82, who was instrumental in helping President Obama pass the Affordable Care Act.

To all those who recently passed from this life to the next, may you find peace. If you were fortunate enough to make a difference toward the greater good, a special thanks. 

Epilogue:

At age 13 when I showed up in Spokane, Washington wearing my Dobie Gillis edition pullover yellow shirt with the diagonal stripes across the front, one of my new friends said: "Wow, look what they're wearing in California!"

 

Where I Was From

Joan Didion, 1970

It's been two weeks since her death at age 87 and writer Joan Didion is still topping the news cycle. As we enter a new year seeking hopeful outlooks, I count Didion's surprising notoriety as a good sign.

First of all, because she earned a living by stringing sentences together -- in essays, reporting, novels and screenplays. The breadth of her work in this age of specialists is impressive. And, in our celebrity-centric culture, writers are not high on the scale. She proved to be an exception.

Secondly, because she was a woman in a man's world, especially when she began writing in the early Sixties. Granted, she had a supportive husband John Gregory Dunne, also a writer and at times collaborator. 

Thirdly, because she wrote the truth as she encountered it, not with an agenda but with an unflinching approach, and a style that would-be writers studied in order to learn the craft. Her sentences were complex yet direct, her pieces always perceptive with a strong sense of place. 

She taught us how to write with a critical eye, including toward herself, the writer. Hemingway she was not.

From The White Album, 1979, a collection of her essays:

"We tell ourselves stories in order to live...We look for the sermon in the suicide, for the social or moral lesson in the murder of five. We interpret what we see, select the most workable of multiple choices. We live entirely, especially if we are writers, by the imposition of a narrative line upon disparate images, by the ideas with which we have learned to freeze the shifting phantasmagoria which is our actual experience. Or at least we do for a while.

“I am talking here about a time when I began to doubt the premises of all the stories I had ever told myself."

And fourthly, she hailed from California, a fifth generation native whose family roots traced back to the early Donner Party, before the ill-fated split that led to starvation in the Sierra. Her ancestors chose the northern route through Oregon.

I have always identified myself as a Californian, having arrived at the age of four in 1951. My family of four -- two parents, one sister and myself -- left Seattle heading for Arizona but ended up in Southern California where I grew up. When I decided to write a memoir about my life and times, my research into the Golden State that would become my home and major influence, led me to a book: Where I Was From by Joan Didion.

Published in 2003, Where I Was From has been called the "central book in Didion's career." She was in her sixties when the book was published, and, as a writer, still going strong. She began as a Goldwater conservative and drifted left after after Reagan.

Born and raised in Sacramento as part of an agrarian family, Didion tells the story of her family and a state that has always been a magnet for newcomers, new ideas and a land of impermanence. I devoured her book which offered critical and personal perspective on California history, its characters and ethos.

I strongly believe in the power of place, one's environment and how it molds us, from the people we meet, the sounds we hear, the ground we walk on, the music we dance to and the smell of the region that we call home. Such was Southern California for me, mostly the valley town of Pomona, 30 miles east of Los Angeles, home of the L.A. County Fair.

In addition to Malibu, Didion spent much of her career in New York City and a period in Hawaii, yet her California roots formed her soul.

Interesting that she used the past tense, "Was From," in the title of her memoir. 

Where I was from is not the same place that it was when I grew up, either, especially Southern California and Pomona, now a speck amid the sprawl, once a small valley town known as Queen of the Citrus Belt. 

Joan Didion's passing reminds me that I've yet to finish my project. Of course it would help if I possessed her drive and talent.