Thanksgiving with the Folks

Conversations Overheard:

At dinner, Dad talking about some program he had seen where a soldier in WWII had talked about seeing men by him blown apart. Our friend only hears part of it.

Gloria: Oh my, where you injured at all? (Dad was in the Navy during Korean War)
Me: No, he was talking about a show he saw on WW2. His biggest threat was getting the clap
Dad: Ha Ha Ha
Kim: Now now, this is a family dinner, no war stories about your father in Japan.
Gloria: You were in Japan?
Me: Yea, they made a number of landings into Geisha houses
Dad: Oh I got a medal for that

Then the family classic..
Dad: Jesus Christ, we've got enough dessert for an Army
Kim: Roger, you say that every year, stifle it or I'm going to kick you in the ass

Creative Decorating
Me: What smells like cinnamon, smells good
Kim: These decorative pine cones, they work well don't they
Eleanore(Kim's mother): Will one fit in Roger's rear end
Kim: It might but that could be deadly projectile

Kids Those Days

One of these days I should commit all of my Dad's stories to writing, it would make for a solid movie in the genre of teenage buddy flicks. I keep on hearing new stories. Dad grew up in Hollywood of the 40's-50's, the last gasp of the old Hollywood before it went to hell. His cast of characters were worthy of that era too.. all white but of a variety of ethnicities. What is fascinating is that back then they used to get in all kinds of shit and never got in much trouble. Nowadays I don't think things would have gone so well.

They got into the usual shit. They knew how to sneak into every theater in Hollywood. I believe The Egyptian was the most difficult since you had to sneak past the projectionist booth after sneaking in. I forget which theater it was but climbing down from the roof of one of them they had a pure movie moment when a drain pipe one of the guys was climbing down broke loose off the side of the building and as the drain pipe swung down, so did he. They only got caught once, when they tried ot sneak into Wilshire.. not in their territory.

They were larcenous little bastards. My Dad as much as an upstanding citizen as he is now worked all the angles with his buddies. Most of them worked at a market and it was a cash cow. Stuff a wad of paper up inside the change slot in the payphone of the store. Wait for the customers to continually lose a nickel here and there.. empty.. repeat. Working the store's Christmas Tree lot was a great opportunity for some creative accounting and self tipping by the boys.. apparently the store wasn't the greatest at keeping track of what all they had and at what price.

All kinds of other stories.. food fights up in the Hollywood Hills, running from police (Dad getting literally clotheslined by a clothesline in someone's backyard), one of his buddies throwing a punch at some guy at a party, missing and decking someone's mother instead. What makes all of this more interesting to me was the setting. Special place, special time. To write it here would never do it justice unless I wrote pages. Maybe someday I will figure a way to tell the stories Dad lived.

Kids These Days

My roommate is in the Big Brother program. He was talking to his little brother and asked him about his grades. His little brother Eric, said he got them but he wasn't going to show Gerald since they sucked. Gerald told him he needed to keep up his grades if we wanted to go to school to be a video game designer. Eric reflecting on this agreed and mentioned that he might have to go with his back-up plan. Gerald had to convince him to reveal his backup plan. Apparently it was to be a porn star. Where he got this idea I am not sure, but I doubt it was from career day at school.

Then again, I recall writing an essay in junior high on future plans and I wrote that I thought I might become a mercenary. Imagine if I was a kid now... there would be alarms going off... Commissioner Gordon would be on the Bat line.. and you would have a parent/teacher conference faster than you can say Chuck Heston. Ah, the golden years.