Sacramento

There is nothing so wonderful as taking a trip back to somewhere really fabulous from your childhood. And the quickest way to get there is via some song that you'd forgotten about.

Today, I was listening to Nat King Cole's rendition of "A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley's Square". Something about the strings and the harp and his smooth, velvet tones took me back to the early-sixties - when his style was so popular - and I was back visiting Great Grandma in Sacramento.

Grandma Florence (shown here in the 1920's) was a disagreeable old woman but she had a marvelous old house on Q Street. It was a corner lot and it smelled sweet and musty inside. The bathroom had its original tile and a bear claw tub. Powder and lotions were everywhere and her toothpaste was a powder that came in a can. She wore flowered dresses and had her short brown/gray hair in tight pin curls. And she had an high pitch voice that shook with old age. Thick cat-eye bifocals. She remembered traveling as a very young girl in a covered wagon. She remembered riding in a stage coach. And she remembered being terrified at the sight of Indians (who were very friendly). Its very hard to imagine that I knew intimately someone who rode in a covered wagon. But she was born in the late 1880's on a Christmas day. (I was 28 before she died.) She met her first husband, my grandmother's father Lars, when she was only a very young girl. She fell into a pickle barrel at a dance and screamed with laughter. Story has it that when Lars heard her laugh, he told his friend: "I'm going to marry that girl with the laugh." Anyway, he did. They had three children together - one being my grandmother (whom we called "Mother" because that is what our mom called her). Lars was killed in a car accident when my grandmother was still a little girl. This happened in the early days of automobiles. She never got over it. And how could you?

Grandma Florence wasn't easy to warm to. My mom didn't like her. She had gone to live with her for a while when her own father died. She was only nine at the time, I think, and Grandma hadn't been very nice to her. She told me a story of being so angry with her once, that at the age of 9 she yelled at her: "When you die, I am going to wear red to your funeral" and then she ran out of the house to escape a spanking.

I had my own unfortunate run-in with Grandma Florence. One summer - on a miserable hot Sacramento afternoon, I left our room to go to the kitchen for water or something. And there, in the kitchen with her back to me stood my grandmother her dress held up to her waist, wearing no underwear - just her saggy old backside showing as she stood in front of an electrical fan. I didn't know what to do! I was in a horrible prediciment. Before I could decide, she turned around and saw me. Startled and embarrassed, she proceeded to scream at me in that high pitched shakey voice and I think if she could have killed me, she would have. I just kept saying I was "so sorry". And I really was - the whole experience was unpleasant for me. I couldn't tell what was worse, being yelled at or seeing my grandmother's ancient rear end.

But grandma's house was a child's dream. Seceret passage ways and mysterious old architecture. It had an enormous front porch and you could jump and dance and play on it and wave to anyone passing by. She lived near a park and we would visit it daily. I loved that old park with its big beautiful trees and and squirrels everywhere. It didn't have swings or anything to play on but being there felt magical. Even way back then, that park felt old with history. Like stepping into a painting.

Her house was on a perfectly square block and we would walk around it, holding grandma's hand to go to the Rexall drug store and we would always get a Popsicle. Inside she had a little telephone alcove in the wall that I thought was really cool. And her phone was old fashioned. Her furniture was old but wonderful. She had a fabulous old victrola that had a turn table covered in felt and a very heavy arm and thick needle. My sister Linda and I played the original cast album of "My Fair Lady" on that victrola for hours and hours. I still have every note of that score stored in my head and can play it at will. Rex Harrison talk/singing "I'm an ordinary man who desires nothing more than an just ordinary chance to live exactly as he likes and do precisely what he wants..." (In fact, that particular song takes me to Q Street as well. I can even smell the house.)

We slept in the bedroom right next to hers and had to go through it to get to ours. She had a picture of the famous painting of "The Last Supper" on wood hanging over her bed. It scared me.

We usually visited when her daughter, my grandmother (Mother), came from Moab, Utah to visit. And when that happened, we got to see the whole family. Uncle Ken (the eldest son and an elder of some stature in the Morman church) and his wife Thelma. Thelma was a brassy woman with bright orange hair that she wore in a tall beehive. She was a successful woman who made a lot of money running her own nursery school. An absolutely larger than life character. She would stand tall and wouldn't bend her head to look at you, she'd just lower her eyes. That stance let you knew she was in charge but she talked to you like a grown up and asked questions about you that made you

know she really was interested and so you knew she loved you. She chewed Dentene gum constantly and if she had been in Chicago as a young girl she might easily have dated Al Capone instead of Uncle Ken. She just was large and loud and sexy and you could tell she loved a good time. But she was absolutely no-nonsense too. I can't imagine ever crossing Aunt Thelma. Uncle Ken was diminished in her presence so I don't think great grandma ever approved - and I think Thelma knew that but she didn't seem to mind at all. (After Kenneth died, Thelma went a little wild and became Mother's buddy - having recently been widowed herself. Thelma coaxed her out into the dating world of the elderly. I guess Thelma had a few flings. Then she had a massive stroke that rendered her immobile and without speech for the rest of her days which was a tragedy I felt deeply. Her grown children however, having been raised strict Mormons believed it to be a punishment from God for not living purely after their father had died. My mother's cousin Sherene, a nightclub singer, thought her mother "got what she deserved". What idiots.) Here they all are in earlier days: My mothers' parents, Grandpa Fred (whom I never knew), Grandma (Mother), Kenneth, Thelma, and the baby, Damont.

Uncle Damont was a favorite but he had a highly unstable wife, Louise. Mother told me that Damont married her because he felt sorry for her. That may be true, but how tragic. Louise was so out of touch that he rarely brought her along but he did bring along his damaged girls, Deborah and Vicky, who were our age. They were our playmates but the older we got, the stranger they seemed. My parents discussed taking them in to get them away from Louise's influence and craziness but the task of helping them was overwhelming and so it never happened. Damont had been in World War II and had been in an army jeep when his buddy sitting next to him took a hit and had his head blown off. This "changed" Damont (as one can only imagine) in a very significant way but I didn't know how because I only knew him after all that had happened. My dad and Damont got on very well. Damont had a boat and sometimes we would go riding. But everyone felt sorry for him. However, I always thought he was dear and I loved him.

Great grandma had three sisters - Echo and Alta and one who's name I can't recall. Alta was my grandmother's favorite. Well into her seventies her leg became diseased and the doctor told her that she had a choice - they would either have to remove her leg or leave it alone and she would eventually die. The doctor expected her to choose the later, given her extreme advanced age. Instead she replied, without missing a beat: "Cut the son-of-a-bitch off!" (Mother loved that story!) They lived in Susanville. We rarely saw them but one of them had twin sons who would drop by occasionally. Their names were Donny and Lonny and great grandma adored them, in the same way she adored Liberace. I didn't know anything about anything back then, but I knew that Donny and Lonny were different in the same way Liberace was.

Great grandma would watch Lawrence Welk every Sunday and I would watch with her. I grew to love that show and every now and again I will watch a rerun of it to make me smile. She would also read your fortune and talk of how she "knew" when someone had died. There was craziness in that house but I was oblivious to it. For me, it was a glorious adventure every time we went and I always looked forward to going.

When Mother came to visit, that was the best of all. She was always so delighted to see us and she would take us everywhere. I remember getting dressed up (with gloves!) and going to downtown Sacramento to shop. We would beg her to let us wear lipstick and she would hold our faces by the chin and pat her lipstick tube on our lips - we got absolutely no color on them but we felt grown up. I loved her speaking voice. It was so calm. She was a young grandmother and was very attractive. She dressed well. And she loved on us so hard that you could live on it for a year.

I'm sure there are photos from that house. The only one I can find is one I already posted on July 3, 2009 - if you're interested. Recently I did an arial map search for that house. It appears to be gone, replaced with apartment units. It broke my heart. I will never go there again. The thought of it bring tears to my eyes. I much prefer to keep it exactly as it lives in my memory. Especially at night. Walking outside in the light of old fashioned street lamps under the canopy of beautiful, mature and gnarled trees, if you ventured up just a block or so, you could see the dome of the state Capital Building, lit up like gold. And it was beautiful. And to me, aspirational. Powerful. Grand. Elegant. Like a castle and I was Cinderella waiting to grow up to go a ball there. Magical. Comforting. Promising. And all was right with the world. Just as it should be when you are a child.