TheBanyanTree: Life Stories 27

[Tobie Shapiro]

October 12, 200000006


Dear Every Single One of You,

	I got a list a mile long of special things my ex husband 
wants me to do while I'm moving, including making copies of all the 
family photographs and delivering them to his lawyer, making copies 
of all tax returns from 1991 on and delivering those to his lawyer. 
I'm not doing this while we're moving.  He can do the copying.  And 
he keeps trying to get his new wife involved.  My old friend, his new 
wife.  Things get strange, don't they!  I'd write it down as a life 
story, but it's too close.  I've got to be remembering these things 
from a distance.  That's why you don't hear too much about life in 
the last twenty years.  Maybe I can.  Maybe I can't.  Moving day is 
the 16th, Monday.  I've arranged for Meyshe to be out of school that 
day.  Feyna is gliding above all this mess, kind of hoping it isn't 
happening.  Denial is very effective until the moment reality hits 
you in the face.

	Here is more.



 
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What Scares Whom


	We were out west visiting my mother's family from Silver 
Spring, Maryland.  I was five years old that summer.  My sister was 
seven; my brother was minus two.  My mother was 32, travelling with 
her husband and two young daughters.  We stayed with my mother's 
parents.  My Gramma Fannie and Grampa Benny who lived in the house on 
Del Sur Avenue, in fact the only house that had an address on Del Sur 
which wended its way up a hill in the city built on hills.

	I remember the fog being thick, so thick it came between my 
eyes and my hands, a visible cloud.  In Maryland, we'd gotten used to 
muggy heat in the 90s, and sudden precipitations into thunder and 
lightning storms in the middle of the summer.  We'd gotten used to 
freezing cold during the winter, snow piled high at the sides of the 
road, and ice forming a crust that could kill you if you slipped on 
it.  We got used to hurricanes and storms that rattled all the 
windows and turned the house into a symphony of creaks and groans. 
We got used to skies filled with rain clouds, dark and ominous, and 
bright blue clear skies with the sun blazing down on us poor 
sweltering peons below.  But we didn't know fog.  Fog was magical and 
fog was a mystery, obscuring the vision, impervious to flashlights, 
headlights or street lights.  I loved the fog.

	One foggy day, my cousin, Donnie, who was my mother's 
brother, Harold's, boy, a year older than my sister, went with my 
sister and me to the movies.  As I remember it, we were dropped off 
at the movie by ourselves, but that can't be true.  You wouldn't drop 
off an eight year old boy to watch over his seven and five year old 
girl cousins.  I still can't envision an adult there.  And what adult 
would agree to take three little kids to see, "The Beast From 20,000 
Fathoms"?  It was a classic monster movie of the fifties.  A terrible 
beast threatens the big city and only the brilliant misunderstood 
scientist and his busty glamourous blond laboratory assistant (with 
glasses that come off in the romantic desperate encounter when maybe 
all hope is lost for the city and its terrified citizens) can save 
the lives of thousands.

	Monster movies come in several sizes and shapes, but the 
basics were always there: a scientist and his beautiful laboratory 
assistant, and a creature that cared not for the lives of anyone, in 
fact who routinely ate anyone.  There was usually military 
involvement, our fine boys of the army, the navy, the air force, all 
ready to bombard the beast with gunfire, buzzing airplanes, canons 
from battleships.  And on the ground were the police, helpless 
against the phenomenon of nature that had come to gobble up the big 
city.  There would have to be a huge tall building crushed.  That 
made good footage.

	"The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms", was all of that.  And I was 
five years old watching this scary movie.  But it didn't scare me in 
the slightest.  I knew it was a hoax, fancy camera work, fake howls, 
fake fear, fake beasts, fake science.  What scared me were the news 
reels.  Those preceded the feature films and they filled me with 
anxiety and dread, because they were real.  Real heads of state 
saluting or threatening each other.  Real troops marching off to war. 
Real nuclear warheads trained on our little cities.

	My older sister, however, was scared shitless by the, "Beast 
from 20,000 Fathoms".  When we got back to Gramma's and Grampa's 
house, she kept looking behind her, staying clear of the windows, 
nervously ate her dinner, and at bed time was the worst.  We had been 
given the television room to sleep in.  There was a couch that turned 
into a double fold out bed, and we shared that bed.  Gramma opened 
the windows a crack to let some air in the room.  It was summer, and 
the nights were not as chilly as usual San Francisco nights.  The 
diaphanous white curtains blew into the room, and I watched them, 
like dancers with their seven veils, gracefully billow in the wind. 
But Dana screamed.  It was the breath from the Beast that was blowing 
the curtains into the room.  The Beast must be outside.  She called 
my mother in to calm her, but she wouldn't be calmed.  This repeated 
all night.  "The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms", was outside the house, 
dropping its huge splotches of viscous black blood from the injuries 
it sustained when the air force planes pelted it with bullets.  It 
was wounded, and hence, that much more dangerous.

	And I, all I wanted to do was go to sleep.  Just don't show 
me a newsreel.


 
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Language Barrier

	All the way from Berkeley, California to New York City, I'd 
come with my guitar and  my demonstration tapes to meet Al V. Brown, 
the well placed musician who wanted to be my manager.  Al V. Brown 
was, and still is I presume, a marvellous violist who earned a good 
living playing studio gigs, travelling with the Beaux Arts Trio, and 
playing in the orchestra on Paul Simon's tour.  Al knew everybody in 
the music world.  Through Al, I met, among others, the concert master 
of the NBC Orchestra, Giorgio Ricci, Phil Ramone, who is Paul Simon's 
engineer/producer, and John Hammond, Sr.  He's the visionary that 
discovered Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Bruce Springsteen, and a lot of big 
recording stars who would otherwise be ranting Hippies had Hammond 
not come along and plucked them from obscurity to sign them to 
Columbia records, changing the course of pop music.

	Every time I went to New York City on music business, big 
things happened, both good and bad.  In New York, I came in contact 
with people who were doing important things in the arts, not just 
thinking about them, like in theoretical Berkeley, or squeezing money 
out of it, like in glittery Los Angeles, but actually doing artistic 
things: putting up shows in galleries, making recordings, writing and 
publishing books, playing in major orchestras, writing Broadway 
musicals, composing modern works that were to be performed by major 
musical ensembles.  New York City was a busy place.  There was no way 
to lie still and twiddle when in New York City.

	From the airport, I instructed the taxi driver to get me to 
Al V. Brown's apartment.  The driver loaded my bags into the trunk, 
and I carried my guitar with me in the back seat.  A language barrier 
presented itself.  East coast, West coast, the dialects were clearly 
a stumbling block to communication.

	The driver said:

	"I see you got yaw gitTAH."

	"My what?"

	"Yaw gitTAH."

	"My what?"

	"Yaw gitTAH.  Yaw gitTAH."  He perceived the problem and 
corrected his speech, with obvious effort.  "Yaw gitTARRRR."

	"Oh yes.  My guitar!"

	"Whataya do?" he asked.

	"I'm a writer," I answered.

	"Yer a what?"

	"A writer."

	"A what?"

	"A writer.  A writer."

	"A what?"

	I realized my error, and corrected my speech.  "A RItah"

	"OH!  A RItah!"

	Ya just hafta drahp ya ahs (arrrrs).  Then ya can be 
undahstood.  It's very impawtint to be undahstood.

 
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-- 




Tobie Helene Shapiro
Berkeley, California   USA

tobie at shpilchas.net