Some Willow Glen times - maybe Marina can add more

A long time ago we lived in a small upper-half of a duplex in the Laurel Canyon area of Hollywood. 8020 Willow Glen Road (for some reason childhood addresses stay fixed but adult ones fade quickly - 122 President Court, 1270 Bidwell, 3242 East Del Mar). Willow Glen was the time when so much changed, for good, bad, and none of the above, for all of us. We opened in unexpected ways, we did and thought things we may never have if we had stayed in the midwest, horrible things happened and great things happened.

Much of the time is fragmentary in my mind - hopefully maybe Marina can make much of it more whole here, as she probably remembers a lot of it much better than do I.

Fragments --

Marina and Wes staying up for hour after hour one night, working on an owl that Wes had to turn in for an art class.

A giant candy cane Marina gave Wes one Christmas, the size and shape of a table top pillar candle, that seemed to last for years and appeared at the oddest times.

Wes bent over a frying pan, glasses low on his nose, carefully degreasing taco meat when all others had failed to meet his culinary standards.

Wes carefully draping "his" towel over the back of a chair by his bed, and getting very angry if anyone tried to use it.

Wes, scarred by his braces experiences years before with Dr. Moan (true name), horrified to learn he had gingivitis and spending long spells brushing and flossing. He always feared any disease or condition that might cripple him. He feared, it felt like, learning that he had some provable expression of the damage he sometimes said he felt within.

His long fight with the Literary Book Club, that sent him copy after copy of Arthur Hailey's Wheels, a book he never ordered and never wanted. For a while, a month didn't seem right without at least one brown cardboard package arriving at the door with Wes peering down at it in dismay.

Seeing the comforting glow of his desk lamp at night as I drifted into sleep (we shared a bedroom), seeing him hunched over books and papers. Having him try to explain Melville, Tolstoy, Adams to me. Not a lot went in; he had more luck when he started showing me Lovecraft and all the stories and letters.

The pleasure he had in finding and giving books, wonderful things. Facsimiles of Books of Hours that he shared with Marina, perfect sets of Tolkien for me, and somehow most memorable of all, The Tree Where Man Was Born, an incredible, just right blend of work by Eliot Porter and Peter Mathiessen.

Wes laughing until he coughed at dumb shows - Get Smart, Laugh-In, old Laurel and Hardy and, especially, Japanese science fiction movies ("Oh! Is it hot! Damn, God Damn!") It was so great to see him to the point of pulling off his glasses and wiping his eyes helplessly. Even better if I made some joke that had the effect; not often, but often enough. You bet your sweet bippy.

Seeing Wes walking up the long street, coming home from school (Hollywood High, at first),sometimes with neighborhood dogs trailing after - Gabriel Brother, and Chula, and ?

Wes and Pedro walking together.

Excavating the literal mountain of Dad's book boxes piled into the walkdown linking the downstairs apartment. Wes holding up treasures with glee - Seven Pillars of Wisdom, Mont St. Michel and Chartres, some Hemingway (of course)

Our first camping trip after we moved to California - I don't know if we were living in Pasadena or Willow Glen. We rented a tent of all things, went up to Big Sur (where else?), tried to put the tent together upside down, but down with panache and happy hysteria. Marina hunkered down with the fire, the only one of us to consistently get such things going. Absolute happy amazement, finding Point Lobos like a fairy cloud land tentatively moored to the coast, before all the cypresses lost their health and their looks. Hiking around together; one of the happy things for me is all the hikes Wes and I took during our family camping times before we broke apart.

Wes eating two huge double cheeseburgers, an entire bag of potato chips, two Dr. Peppers and looking around for desert. Not an uncommon experience.

Mom bringing us to Ports of Call and it becoming a hangout, even though a long drive. Walking the little streets, browsing long at the nauticalish book store and watching freighters go by. It's so different there, now.

Zuma and Leo Carillo beach, and Malibu. Tidepools and pillars of rock. Wes unbending enough to roll up his sleeves and his pants legs. He was always too shy to take off his shirt or wear swimming trunks after childhood.

Little Corona Island and frozen bananas.

Disneyland. Wes loved the Matterhorn. And Pirates of the Caribbean, though I think that opened after we moved out of Laurel Canyon. The Blue Bayou was our favorite restaurant. Walking through Monsanto's House of the Future. The rocket trip to Mars. Having lemon meringue tarts on Main Street, meeting on the bridge, happy to see fireworks. Wes standing next to Lisa on the Carousel, one time (I don't think he would ever have sat on the Carousel, in case it looked like he wanted to be there) and his smile for her when she looked so excited.

Trying to shovel the mud back onto the hill side after big rains flooded it all onto our big patio.

Wes disgusted with me because I didn't get how cool it was that Felix Pappalardi lived a few doors up from us.

Climbing onto the roof, trying to watch for falling stars.

Wes getting into his college clothes (LACC at the time); old sports jacket, jeans, big sandals. Camus or Hesse or Mann clutched under his arm.

Lying in our beds across the room from one another, late at night in the dark when neither of us could sleep, talking about history, geography, books. Wondering what Dad was doing. Talking about snow, and Trout Lake, and sleds and some of our old trips. Wondering what we'd be doing in 5 years (any farther seemed too far to be real). Always thought Wes would be a great, wonderful professor. Hello, Mr. Chips.

Wes terrifying me with stories of the Prussian ghost calvary, coming up the foggy streets to our house, to get me in particular. Having to let me come over and sleep with him afterwards when I got too scared. He acting disgruntled but putting a comforting arm around me and tell me not to worry, he'd take care of anything that tried to come in. I believed him.

Wes loved Pedro. Pedro would slowly displace him on his bed, starting with a nose sliding in, then one paw, slowly, slowly, then another, then carefully lying full length against Wes, falling asleep, snoring, rolling over and pushing at him with all four paws until Wes was lying on the edge of a sliver of the bed; sometimes, whump, he was down and Pedro was more comfortable.

Books, books, books.

His horror after Moby Dick.

Seeing 2001 when it first came out, at the Paramount. Feeling like it was all possible.-

Seeing two nights of the Russian War & Peace. How amazing we thought Borodino was.

Watching Apollo after Apollo. Thinking it was all coming true, not realising it was all ending even then.

CSN&Y Deja Vu

Cream Wheels of Fire and hearing him sing "Born under a bad sign" to himself late at night.

Wes singing "Silent Night" in German - was that Willow Glen, or where?

Christmas, always Christmas. A good dark, Christmas lights, finding presents even though we were poor and getting poorer. Christmas eve for Grandpa, and Christmas morning for everyone. Wes getting angry if I just layered tinsel on the tree. He'd take it off and carefully lay it, strand by strand, until it was just right. It would be nice to have pictures of them after he finished.

Reading parts of "Bored of the Rings" to him just to get him to laugh, although he laughed most at my pronouncing "anecdotes" as "ah-neck-toe-dees."

His wonderful compact OED and sitting with him for hours looking up words. Looking for even more hours at the giant Rand-McNally atlas. Sometimes playing at taking over the world, taking turns naming the countries that were "ours" and why.

College Wes sitting up one night reading Miss Pickerell on Mars.

Hours and hours and hours playing Avalon Hill games, especially Afrika Korps (and Blitzkrieg). Wuste Georg. Going for 12 hours or more at a stretch seemed perfectly natural. And Stratego, of course.

The three of us playing long games of War during odd nights. And Life, sometimes.

Why are brief times that seemed literally timeless etched so much more sharply in the mind than any five-times longer blocks of later on?

Coming home from Fedco after Mom got her monthly paycheck, with mountains of bags and turning our very empty refrigerator into a sea of food.

Arguing over crackers a few weeks later.

Thinking it all would always be this way, somehow. Both frightened and comforted by the thought. Then we moved. To 3rd Street, I think, and the gypsy house.