Monday, March 3, 2014

Chapter 27 – Meet the Parents



With the ominous presence of Big Al Fohrman always looming, Donna and I knew it was time to move out of Camrose Drive. Besides, with two dogs and a raise in rent, a change would be welcome. We scoured the classifieds and checked out Homefinders, but it wasn’t until we began driving around the foothills of Hollywood did we find it. Just before the corner of Primrose and Vine we saw a for rent sign in front of two side by side apartments. One was 2107 and the other was 2109 Vine Street. I liked the poetic symmetry of 2109 Vine but, alas, we moved into the southernmost at 2107. There were two apartments below only accessible from the rear of the complex by either driving or walking down a steep graded driveway. If it ever snowed you would have a tough time getting your car up that mountainous asphalt path. My dad helped us carry all of my belongings into the rented or borrowed van. At sixty-eight he was still vibrant and a lean machine. Unfortunately, things for him were changing.
 Did I say the apartment was small? It was a matchbox. How the designer managed to cramp three bedrooms into a 600 square foot space I’ll never know. Obviously the rooms were tiny and there was only one bathroom without the luxury of a tub. I’m a bath guy. I knew I would miss soaking in the giant tub that took up over half the space in the bathroom at Camrose. Some of my best ideas came out of a tub—I still have a few of the water-stained lyric sheets to prove it. We claimed the middle bedroom as our sleeping quarters while the front bedroom became the office of Universal Data Supply. The back bedroom that overlooked the Jacaranda and bougainvillea trees was used as a dining room/music/sewing room. The kitchen was modern enough to please Donna, and I guess I liked it well enough but anything with a sink, refrigerator and stove would suit me fine. It dive have a cool feature, one of those cutouts in the wall that lead to a counter in the living room. You could just cook it and serve it up and slide in on through—we ate most of our meals there.
The owners of the property were a couple in their early to mid thirties by the name of Bob and Cynthia who lived downstairs in the largest of the four units. They had this annoying little Yorkshire terrier that barked all the time. I can still hear the painful echoes of Bob’s voice calling, “Duke...Duke...” outside our bedroom window in the early morning. The only time Bridget or Ginger ever barked was when someone knocked at the door. They were very well behaved and thankful to be rescued from the mean streets of Los Angeles.
I was still in contact with my lady friend, Nicky Graham, who I had met when I was looking for a place to live with Maria a few years back; she now had given up the American dream and had moved home to London. Even though Nicky was a Sassenach, (a term used by the Scottish to describe the upper-crusty English), I knew Donna would enjoy her company and hearing stories of merry ole England.
Nicky believed in my music and had secured a job at a pub in SoHo for me over the summer and had invited us to stay with her in her flat in Barnes located in the southwest part of London. Nicky and her speech writing husband, Wytham, who only lived with her in intervals, told us to meet up at one of the oldest pubs in London right by the Thames. We got a table in the back overlooking the long and winding river. There was this chap with a seven- iron in his hand who wanted to place a wager. The bet was a pound note if I could knock the ball across the river that didn’t seem excessively wide to me—maybe a hundred and thirty yards tops. It was game on. I steadied myself as close to the bank as I could. I was confident that I could hit a measly seven-iron at least a hundred and fifty yards so I fired my best shot. It was a high lofting draw that exploded into the cloud laden sky and...landed right in the middle of the Thames. The chap laughed as he took my money and then admitted it was over two hundred and fifty yards across. Looks can be deceiving.
Donna and I had already made plans to visit her mum and dad in June so London was a pit stop. Olive and David Smollett were going to get a first look at their daughter’s cheeky American boyfriend. The Smollett’s lived in Glenrothes, a small town in Fife, and I had a choice to either bring my guitar or my golf clubs, I couldn’t manage both. Scotland, being the home of golf, left me little choice. I figured I could always buy a guitar over there but having to get used to a borrowed set of clubs was out of the question. I took my golf clubs—I should have used my three-wood to carry the Thames but, alas, I had left it in the rental and was too lazy to unpack it.
Before the meeting at the pub, we landed at Heathrow airport in the middle of June of 1989 and hired a car, an economy vehicle; I think it was a Vauxhall or a Renault. Donna was worried about my driving on the opposite side of the street, but I assured her that I was a quick learner, besides I wanted to experience the thrill of racing through the roundabouts and cobblestone streets of old London town. After unpacking and settling in to Nicky’s flat, we ventured forth to look for the club I was hired to sing and play in down in ole SoHo. It was called Mitchell’s Pub. I was getting lost so I pulled over in the middle of a roundabout to check the map. Donna freaked out screaming, “you can’t stop in a roundabout. They’ll smack right into ya.” She convinced me to keep going. One a narrow street, not wanting to drift past the center divider, I got a little too close to a parked car. Crack! My door mirror sideswiped the mirror of a Range Rover or Jaguar. Not wanting to stop illegally in another roundabout, I panicked and kept driving hoping nobody saw me and took down my license plate number. The glass in my mirror was a spider’s web of cracks, but the housing was intact. I guess I should have taken out insurance but I didn’t want to pay the extra forty pounds. I should have listened to ole Ben Franklin’s adage, “Penny wise pound foolish”.
Donna said her dad was fairly handy at fixing things, so we decided we would deal with it when we got to Glenrothes. I managed to find a parking spot a few blocks from Mitchell’s Pub. We were famished and saw a wonderful little curry place a few stores down. Great Britain has some of the best Indian restaurants in the word and this place was no exception to that rule. I ordered a chicken Vindaloo and it was so spicy I had to douse my burning mouth with nearly a gallon of sweet tea. It didn’t help. The mint ice cream cooled it a little.
After checking the meter on the rental, we walked over to Mitchell’s pub. I asked the woman at the counter if the manager was in and she told me he was in the back and would be out in a few minutes. We ordered a pint of lager and waited at the bar. I wondered what kind of club didn’t have a stage, I couldn’t see one anywhere. All I could see was a mixing console and disco lights in the ceiling. When the manager finally arrived, I introduced him to Donna and mentioned I was scheduled to appear in a fortnight. He shot me a confused look. “Appear?” he queried.
“Yes. Nicky Graham had arranged an engagement here for the end of June. You might want to check your booking schedule.” I said.
“I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news but, we don’t have live acts here anymore,” He said in his stiff upper lipped manner.
“You’re kidding!”
“I’m afraid not. We just hired a DJ.”
“Come on Donna, let’s get out of here.”
I was pissed off. I could have killed Nicky and probably would when we got back to her flat in Barnes. Donna tried to console me by saying, “James, they have plenty of places to play in Scotland. Plus you were the one who decided to leave your guitar at home and bring your golf clubs.”
“You’re right,” I said after taking a cleansing breath to calm myself down. I would find out later that she was right about 99% of the time. That night, instead of reading Nicky the riot act, we all got a little drunk, something Nicky was very adept at. I don’t know if it was the change in the weather or the germs that were flying through the air ducts on the plane, but Donna was coming down with something. She had a lie down on Nicky’s couch and was burning up with a fever. Nicky gave her some antibiotics and a cup of tea. She was out for the night. The next morning, after loading her up with more pills and tea, we headed north on the M1.
By nine that evening we made it to Wilmslow, Cheshire, just outside of Manchester to the home of my cousin Jason and his lovely girlfriend, Nicky. Yes, another Nicky. Donna was amazed that I had relatives that were more British than her own family, especially when we were invited over to dinner the next evening at Jason’s mum and dad’s place. She couldn’t believe that the food was covered with doilies and David Sacks had such a strong English accent, nevermind the tea and biscuits. It was an anglophile’s dream. After dinner we went back to Jason and Nicky’s flat and my cousin brought out a guitar and a big bass fiddle. We had a rollicking jam that lasted to the wee hours while Nicky number two and Donna traded stories of growing up in the Isles.
The next morning we said a fond farewell to Jason and Nicky and got back on the motorway. We noticed as soon as we crossed the border past Hadrian’s Wall how the roads suddenly became less desirable. Donna told me that the Scot’s were treated like second class citizens by the English and didn’t care what kind of shape the Scottish motorway’s were in as long as they had their tea and crumpets in the morning and their Pimm’s cups at night.
By five thirty we had passed the small town of Lockerbie and I thought about that night we had our Christmas dinner on the floor of our Camrose apartment with Irene and Fiona. I could still see the burned out rooftops and blackened patches of grass in the distance. It was a real eye opener and a foreshadowing of future terrorist events that I had no idea at the time would happen. 9-11 was still a dozen years into the future.
By seven o’clock we were crossing the Forth Road Bridge that led to the Kingdom of Fife. In thirty minutes we would be in Glenrothes and I would be face to face with, what I hoped might be my future in-laws. Donna saw her two sisters, Beverly and Heather, waiting on the wee patch of grass outside the council flat on Bilsland Road. She got out of the car and they gave her a welcoming hug that was genuinely reciprocated. They stared suspiciously at me but then after an awkward moment, hugged me gratuitously. We left out things in the car and walked in the front door where Olive and David Smollett were in the living room. Olive burst into tears when seeing the daughter that had left for America a year and a half earlier and enveloped her in her shaky arms. David was having trouble concealing his teary eye and gave me a bone crushing handshake. It was a long overdue reunion. David’s accent was so thick I could barely make out half of the words. But Olive! Oh my God! I don’t know if she was nervous to meet me or what; not only did she have the thickest Scottish accent I had ever heard, but she stuttered. I smiled and nodded my head when I thought she asked if I wanted a cup a tea. They were genuinely nice people who were trying to be accommodating as possible to the strange American that would soon whisk their daughter away to the States for good. At that point I had no real way of knowing that, but I think they knew.
David did help me find a mirror replacement in an auto parts store in downtown Glenrothes just outside of Kirkcaldy. I wouldn’t say the mirror looked as good as new, but it wasn’t bad either. The car rental company never called so I guess I got away with it. Lucky, I guess. I hoped the mirror on the Jag or Range Rover I hit in London was faring as well. My sleeping quarters was Donna’s old bedroom and it was awkward being so close to the future in-laws with nothing but a paper thin wall separating me from them. I was hoping Donna would sneak in to my bed in the wee hours of the night, but she convinced me to wait until we got our next destination—the ancient castle at Stirling (pictured), in the central section of bonny Scotland. It was only a few days away and I told her I could wait—but not too long! The next morning was golf at Ladybank in Fife (pictured) with David in the cool mist and rain without the luxury of golf carts (real golfers walk the course). Ah Scotland, the home of golf—I was in my element and ready to attack the fairways and greens with a vengeance. Fore!





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