"Schwartzkopf." That was the word hissed repeatedly by an old man as he followed us, huffing and spitting he was so beside himself, as we walked down a sidestreet in Germany. This was in 1975 or 1976, thirty years after the end of WWII.
Literally translated, it means "black lover." It was true. I was with William. We faced other incidents of discrimination in Germany, more than in any other country, partly because they may have thought I was German.
A woman at the lunch counter in the train station refused to serve us, moving pointedly and repeatedly to the other end of the counter to avoid having to wait on us. The scariest moment was when we took the wrong train and ended up waiting on the platform in a tiny town as the other people on the platform began to assume a mob aspect, muttering among themselves while glancing our direction.
It also happened in other countries. In Rome at a famous sidewalk restaurant, the waiter brought our salads with a smirk; one bite and it was immediately apparent why. William's had been salted into inedibility and mine had been peppered. They had made their black and white point.
It was worse in Algeciras, Spain. While waiting for the ferry to cross over to Morocco, we went into a restaurant where William was served a beer into which the barman had pissed.
This latest incident involving Henry Louis Gates, who was arrested while trying to open the stuck door of his Harvard-owned townhouse, is a reminder that racism is still present in this country. What if he had been Bill Gates? The policeman would probably have said, "Can I help you get that stuck door open?"
I loved the comment of President Obama, who said he probably would have been shot under similar circumstances if trying to open the door at the White House.
I am listening tonight to KGO in San Francisco, and Dick Gregory is being interviewed on air. Always inciteful, he speaks truth without hate with the kind of resignation that can only result from growing up and surviving as long as he has in this society. Just listening to the cadence of his voice brings back feelings I haven't felt for years.
In my corner of the world, there are few black people. There are other minorities --- Hispanics and remnants of the tribes that once lived along this river. Dick Gregory once came to the Northwest to take up the fishing rights issue.
When I lived in New York, my second encounter with Miles Davis was because he was trying to hail a cab on West End Avenue, around the corner from his brownstone on 77th.
"Get me a cab," he said in his raspy whisper. "They'll stop for you because you're white." He was right.
An image of him playing his trumpet is on the wall over my computer. Next to him is the photo I took of Charles Mingus, lighting his pipe at the piano at UC Berkeley, and my Todd woodcut of Eric Dolphy.
Lou Donaldson also looks like he is praying while holding his horn in the sepia-tone photo I took of him this year at the Portland Jazz Festival. Right behind him is propped the album cover of "Underground," by Thelonious Monk. He is sitting at a piano with a gun over his shoulder in that famously staged photo echoing the French resistance. Bound and gagged in a chair is a German officer, and in the background is an eery echo of Patricia Hearst, a woman wearing a beret and carrying an automatic weapon.
While living in San Francisco during the years she was on the lam with the SLA, I was once pulled out of a car by the police on the Bay Bridge and had to explain myself because they thought I was her.
My mother occasionally walks into my room and holds her tongue while glancing at my gallery. Today, she expressed her outrage at the Gates incident while revealing some old attitudes. I did not see the footage. She said she was worried about the potential for civil unrest at a march planned tonight. The TV reporters had interviewed "some Negro women," she said, and they had said some "ugly things." I felt like saying, "Mom, they haven't been called a Negro for 40 years." But I held my tongue, too.
I guess it's true. I am a "schwartzkopf."
Thursday, July 23, 2009
Thursday, July 16, 2009
The former Fox Theatre and long-ago Portland
I sang with a band in the early 1970's in Portland, Ore., but I also had a day job working at the Fox Theatre in downtown Portland. It was a classic theater, demolished in 1997, but was built in 1911 as a movie palace. It still had ornate ceilings, and balconies with red velvet curtains.
It was remodeled in 1954 at a cost of $230,000, and was torn down to make room for the Fox Tower, a current blight on the downtown cityscape.
When I worked there it was a bit on the seedy side and was a second-run theatre showing some first-run films. Its early elegance was a match for the Paramount up Broadway.
For the Fox showing of "Young Frankenstein," the theater manager contributed a Vandegraaf generator and old posters from his collection of '20s and '30's film memorabilia for the display cases. We also had lines around the block for the popular Bruce Lee kung fu films.
I especially hated the uniforms, which were Mann Theatre blue and yellow, and did not exactly fit my shape. I also hated working behind the candy counter, which smelled like stale popcorn. Working the front booth meant if your cash register was low for some reason, you had to make it up on the spot. I believe the same policy was in effect at the candy counter, but it was not quite as stringently applied. Not many girls wanted to work the ticket booth, and I often ended up in that tiny prison, freezing or roasting behind the glass on holidays or someone else's missed shifts.
The backstage area of the Fox was quite intimidating, a maze of working theater passages and subareas. Going for supplies was an adventure of the cobwebby sort.
I let the young kids of a friend, Nancy King, into the theater for free to see Bruce Lee films, and that was never challenged, but a boyfriend was not entirely welcome. I suspect the theater manager watched us when I went backstage on a break to hang out with him for 10 or 15 minutes. I soon broke off that affair; I think the theatre manager hoped he could watch us again from behind the red velvet curtains.
While working at the theater, I had a side venture going in addition to the band. I went to Oregon Leather, down on the other side of Burnside in the Park blocks, and purchased remnants of leather and other fabrics that I sewed (often using my great grandmother's treadle) into items sold on consignment in little boutiques. Among them was a certain little blue and green upholstery backpack that was quite distinctive. It had an antique rounded button as a fastener, grass green webbing straps, and a blue-green slub-patterned upholstery fabric body. It didn't sell, so I used it for awhile myself. Then I consigned it to a dumpster, replacing it with something more utilitarian.
I often worked for other people in the Fox ticket booth when they didn't want to work on unpopular shifts, including holidays. One Christmas, no one else would work, so I showed up the morning of Christmas Day.
As I sat in the isolated front window, the streets almost deserted, I saw a familiar old man who was a regular on Broadway, a down-and-outer who lacked the vices of some of the more obnoxious street people. He was a slumped-over old man simply trying to survive, and on his back that morning for the first time was a familiar item that I had discarded within the last 24 hours in a Northwest Portland dumpster --- the green and blue backpack. It was a Christmas gift to him from me, a sign to never take my misery for granted. I was glad that someone else could utilize a discard with a value, a creative object.
I can still see it on his back.
It was remodeled in 1954 at a cost of $230,000, and was torn down to make room for the Fox Tower, a current blight on the downtown cityscape.
When I worked there it was a bit on the seedy side and was a second-run theatre showing some first-run films. Its early elegance was a match for the Paramount up Broadway.
For the Fox showing of "Young Frankenstein," the theater manager contributed a Vandegraaf generator and old posters from his collection of '20s and '30's film memorabilia for the display cases. We also had lines around the block for the popular Bruce Lee kung fu films.
I especially hated the uniforms, which were Mann Theatre blue and yellow, and did not exactly fit my shape. I also hated working behind the candy counter, which smelled like stale popcorn. Working the front booth meant if your cash register was low for some reason, you had to make it up on the spot. I believe the same policy was in effect at the candy counter, but it was not quite as stringently applied. Not many girls wanted to work the ticket booth, and I often ended up in that tiny prison, freezing or roasting behind the glass on holidays or someone else's missed shifts.
The backstage area of the Fox was quite intimidating, a maze of working theater passages and subareas. Going for supplies was an adventure of the cobwebby sort.
I let the young kids of a friend, Nancy King, into the theater for free to see Bruce Lee films, and that was never challenged, but a boyfriend was not entirely welcome. I suspect the theater manager watched us when I went backstage on a break to hang out with him for 10 or 15 minutes. I soon broke off that affair; I think the theatre manager hoped he could watch us again from behind the red velvet curtains.
While working at the theater, I had a side venture going in addition to the band. I went to Oregon Leather, down on the other side of Burnside in the Park blocks, and purchased remnants of leather and other fabrics that I sewed (often using my great grandmother's treadle) into items sold on consignment in little boutiques. Among them was a certain little blue and green upholstery backpack that was quite distinctive. It had an antique rounded button as a fastener, grass green webbing straps, and a blue-green slub-patterned upholstery fabric body. It didn't sell, so I used it for awhile myself. Then I consigned it to a dumpster, replacing it with something more utilitarian.
I often worked for other people in the Fox ticket booth when they didn't want to work on unpopular shifts, including holidays. One Christmas, no one else would work, so I showed up the morning of Christmas Day.
As I sat in the isolated front window, the streets almost deserted, I saw a familiar old man who was a regular on Broadway, a down-and-outer who lacked the vices of some of the more obnoxious street people. He was a slumped-over old man simply trying to survive, and on his back that morning for the first time was a familiar item that I had discarded within the last 24 hours in a Northwest Portland dumpster --- the green and blue backpack. It was a Christmas gift to him from me, a sign to never take my misery for granted. I was glad that someone else could utilize a discard with a value, a creative object.
I can still see it on his back.
Sunday, July 5, 2009
Over My Head
The lettuce was wilting at the Gorge-Grown farmers market the morning of the Fourth. The vendors were busy with spray bottles trying to revive their wares. I bought the last basket of blueberries from Alice Meyers and some edible pod peas from Norm Haight. Breakfast Sunday morning was sourdough waffles with blueberry compote. The sugar snap peas will go into an herb/penne pasta salad for lunch.
Mom and I went to the fairgrounds around 2:45 on the Fourth, prepared for the duration with lawnchairs, hats, books and knitting, plus a small cooler filled with sugar-free root beer, cheese and fruit (Mom is a diabetic and gets shaky sometimes). Almost no one was there for festivities supposedly starting at 3. We camped in the only shade we could find, just outside an orange taped-off area because of the fireworks.
I walked over to see what was happening in the horse arena, where the games were supposed to be. No one had signed up. John Reaney was pitching horseshoes, but there were no keg tossers, tug-of-war competitors, not even a water balloon tosser. The Dogzilla stand and Eagles burger booth were virtually deserted.
The wind blew the dedication page out of the book Mom was reading, "Pioneer Women." I had given it to my Kansas grandmother, and got it back after she died.
Just settling in, we were asked to move our outpost as they put the safety barrier back further.
After loading things back into the van, I thought I would try to get a photo. There were a few teens playing a desultory game of volleyball. Every one of their serves went offside.
I was hot. "Somebody's grumpy," Reaney observed as he acknowledged me while measuring a ringer with the only other horseshoe player.
Mom wanted to go for a drive. We wandered down to the waterfront to watch the kiteboarders, then decided to see what was happening in Cascade Locks. From the vantage point of the Bridge of the Gods we could see literally thousands of people. Almost none of them were actually from Cascade Locks. They were picnicking, playing guitars, parading their dogs and eating ice cream. Mom was intimidated by their numbers and decided to stay in the van and read her book.
I snapped a few pictures, then we went to dinner at the Charburger. Mom had the charbroiled salmon, likely from one of the Indian fish sellers set up in the parking lot under the bridge.
We crossed the bridge again. Music was underway in the covered area between the barns where the Bluegrass Festival is held. About 35 people were scattered in the stands and on folding chairs.
It was finally starting to cool off. We found another picnic table, this time closer to the water, with a row of poplars for shade. The wind was waning. We settled in to wait for the fireworks. I listened to KBOO on my old Walkman, which was broadcasting the Blues Festival live from the Portland waterfront. There were several acts from New Orleans, the final one Bonerama, with four trombonists playing pleasant cacaphony. It was the perfect accompaniment. At one point, I took off the headphones long enough to take a few pictures of the Jive Turkeys playing their set. Jackie Burns was looking hot (in the other sense) in a lowcut red dress, playing keyboards and singing like Chrissy Hynde.
More and more young families began arriving with their blankets and coolers, staking their claim to the goose poop-covered grass. Japanese men staying at Skamania Lodge asked if they could share our picnic table. Their English-speaking teen daughters arrived a little later.
The nearly full moon rose over the gorge walls, casting its rippling reflection over Rock Cove. People tried to capture it on their cell phones as youngsters ran in circles waving glow sticks and wearing glow halos.
No personal fireworks were allowed on the fairgrounds this year, unlike other years that occasionally resembled WWIII, but Rock Creek Park was literally ringed with displays that must have cost hundreds of dollars. Some were being set off on the waterfront. Others were behind us, erupting over the tops of rows of evergreen trees.
The Jive Turkeys were still playing around 10 p.m. when the real show began. It was one "ooh" and "aah" after another. We had a nearly front row seat. I got a crick in my neck, looking upward as each burst flowered overhead. The Japanese girls did a 'play by play,' saying, "hair" when glistening silver strands descended, or "Christmas," for the red and green showers. Then the fireworks began across the river in Cascade Locks. It was a rivalry of bombs bursting in air. The walls of the Columbia Gorge reverberated.
There were three bursts of simultaneous displays, which usually signal the finale, but everyone was pleasantly surprised as the show continued. Then the real finale began. The battery in my digital camera gave up the ghost, and I watched the show happening overhead with the elation of an 11-year-old.
Thank you. I am no longer grumpy.
Mom and I went to the fairgrounds around 2:45 on the Fourth, prepared for the duration with lawnchairs, hats, books and knitting, plus a small cooler filled with sugar-free root beer, cheese and fruit (Mom is a diabetic and gets shaky sometimes). Almost no one was there for festivities supposedly starting at 3. We camped in the only shade we could find, just outside an orange taped-off area because of the fireworks.
I walked over to see what was happening in the horse arena, where the games were supposed to be. No one had signed up. John Reaney was pitching horseshoes, but there were no keg tossers, tug-of-war competitors, not even a water balloon tosser. The Dogzilla stand and Eagles burger booth were virtually deserted.
The wind blew the dedication page out of the book Mom was reading, "Pioneer Women." I had given it to my Kansas grandmother, and got it back after she died.
Just settling in, we were asked to move our outpost as they put the safety barrier back further.
After loading things back into the van, I thought I would try to get a photo. There were a few teens playing a desultory game of volleyball. Every one of their serves went offside.
I was hot. "Somebody's grumpy," Reaney observed as he acknowledged me while measuring a ringer with the only other horseshoe player.
Mom wanted to go for a drive. We wandered down to the waterfront to watch the kiteboarders, then decided to see what was happening in Cascade Locks. From the vantage point of the Bridge of the Gods we could see literally thousands of people. Almost none of them were actually from Cascade Locks. They were picnicking, playing guitars, parading their dogs and eating ice cream. Mom was intimidated by their numbers and decided to stay in the van and read her book.
I snapped a few pictures, then we went to dinner at the Charburger. Mom had the charbroiled salmon, likely from one of the Indian fish sellers set up in the parking lot under the bridge.
We crossed the bridge again. Music was underway in the covered area between the barns where the Bluegrass Festival is held. About 35 people were scattered in the stands and on folding chairs.
It was finally starting to cool off. We found another picnic table, this time closer to the water, with a row of poplars for shade. The wind was waning. We settled in to wait for the fireworks. I listened to KBOO on my old Walkman, which was broadcasting the Blues Festival live from the Portland waterfront. There were several acts from New Orleans, the final one Bonerama, with four trombonists playing pleasant cacaphony. It was the perfect accompaniment. At one point, I took off the headphones long enough to take a few pictures of the Jive Turkeys playing their set. Jackie Burns was looking hot (in the other sense) in a lowcut red dress, playing keyboards and singing like Chrissy Hynde.
More and more young families began arriving with their blankets and coolers, staking their claim to the goose poop-covered grass. Japanese men staying at Skamania Lodge asked if they could share our picnic table. Their English-speaking teen daughters arrived a little later.
The nearly full moon rose over the gorge walls, casting its rippling reflection over Rock Cove. People tried to capture it on their cell phones as youngsters ran in circles waving glow sticks and wearing glow halos.
No personal fireworks were allowed on the fairgrounds this year, unlike other years that occasionally resembled WWIII, but Rock Creek Park was literally ringed with displays that must have cost hundreds of dollars. Some were being set off on the waterfront. Others were behind us, erupting over the tops of rows of evergreen trees.
The Jive Turkeys were still playing around 10 p.m. when the real show began. It was one "ooh" and "aah" after another. We had a nearly front row seat. I got a crick in my neck, looking upward as each burst flowered overhead. The Japanese girls did a 'play by play,' saying, "hair" when glistening silver strands descended, or "Christmas," for the red and green showers. Then the fireworks began across the river in Cascade Locks. It was a rivalry of bombs bursting in air. The walls of the Columbia Gorge reverberated.
There were three bursts of simultaneous displays, which usually signal the finale, but everyone was pleasantly surprised as the show continued. Then the real finale began. The battery in my digital camera gave up the ghost, and I watched the show happening overhead with the elation of an 11-year-old.
Thank you. I am no longer grumpy.
Wednesday, July 1, 2009
Through the Haze
After all these years, (41?) I had an email from Marty Baum, the leader of Natty Bumpo. I had joined the band in San Francisco, and traveled with them to Washington D.C., their home base. They'd recorded an LP for Mercury with another female singer, and I had to learn the material by listening to the record over and over. This occurred after they had appeared as the opener for Jimi Hendrix during his first gigs back in the U.S. from England in the fall of 1967. Jimi was in fine form with the Experience, and while I was not with them at the time, it had been a major life-and music-altering influence on the band.
When we first got back to D.C., the home of Marty, the drummer, Stephen, the bass player, and Junior, the guitar player, we stayed in the former servant's quarters of an antebellum mansion in Virginia. The daughter of the family was a music fan, if a bit loopy. She was a friend of Jim Morrison's longtime girlfriend, Pam. We rehearsed in what had been the stables/carriage house. Once when it rained, I got a bad electric shock on the lips from the mic after stepping into a puddle on the floor from the leaky roof. The appliances in the house did not work, so I cooked meals in a popcorn popper. We gathered our loose change ---- we weren't gigging yet --- and bought bags of rice and split peas, carrots, onions, etc., and I cooked nourishing, cheap food for us. Hippie mama I was; after growing up in a family of nine, I knew how to cook in quantity for cheap, although the popcorn popper was a challenge. It took quite a bit longer to get things done, but it was no worse than camping at the 11,000-foot level in the Rockies waiting for Kahoutek to land and wipe out the West Coast.
When the band started playing, we had a variety of gigs, from outdoor concerts sponsored by a radio station in Maryland to being the house band at the Showboat on 18th and Columbia Road.
When the band had a gig at a national librarian's convention in a hotel ballroom, it was a very hot, humid day, and the beer was flowing. The librarians were dancing on the tables. I was singing "Purple Haze." Marty's drums were set up on a small riser, and the cymbal was not screwed down well. It came off its moorings and flew through the air like a flying saucer. I had my eyes closed and didn't see it coming. It knocked me out cold and sliced my nose open. I was lying on the floor, still out, when a friend/male groupie of mine (an older guy named Dan, who had an antique store featuring brass beds) came in the door as everyone was standing around wondering what to do. He scooped me up and tossed me in the back seat of his convertible and took me to an emergency room. It was too busy with knife fights, etc., so he took me to another hospital. The intern said he didn't want to sew my lip, and put on a butterfly bandage instead. I was instructed not to talk or sing for something like 10 days, and not to eat anything that couldn't be ingested through a straw. Dan took care of me, keeping me in milkshakes and combustibles. I still have a small scar that is showing up more as I age, along with the scar on my upper lip from a VW crash a couple of years later.
One gig at the Showboat especially stands out in my mind. We did the regular gig, then the after-hours part. Everyone was tired. It was my birthday, and my friend Karen brought me a turquoise satin skirt she'd stitched up. While most everyone else was drunk, I had ingested something mind-altering before the after-hours set. When it came time to play, Marty was on the B-3 rather than drums, and I think Junior was on the drums. The club started filling up. I particularly remember Willie the Pimp and his ladies, dressed in long gowns in graduating shades that matched their hair. I remember improvising the lyrics to a long blues.
The band broke up when it turned out payments hadn't been made on critical band equipment.
I worked for a time as an underage cocktail waitress at a club around the corner from the Showboat called The Bridge, which had formerly been the best French restaurant in D.C. (I believe the bakery is still there --- I recognized its name this year when I was there for the Inauguration). The bartender was 17, the head waitress was an underground abortionist; the maitre d' had a PhD in biophysics and had been a bodyguard for Malcolm X. I worked for him for a time, transcribing tapes for a book he was writing.
The club was owned by a player on the Redskins who was kicked off the team for gambling. It went into receivership. We were all owed back wages, so we ran the club for a month or so, doing music, poetry readings, and buying groceries at the local grocery so the French chef who was throwing knives at walls could earn his way back home, too.
I applied for a job with UPI as a copygirl, and had gone for the second interview when I got a call from home that my sister had been hit by a truck, and if I wanted to see her, I'd better get there. That was the end of my sojourn in D.C.
After the Inauguration, I took the Metro around to various places I vaguely remembered. I bought groceries at an international store near 18th and Columbia Road and cooked an awesome dinner for my hosts.
When we first got back to D.C., the home of Marty, the drummer, Stephen, the bass player, and Junior, the guitar player, we stayed in the former servant's quarters of an antebellum mansion in Virginia. The daughter of the family was a music fan, if a bit loopy. She was a friend of Jim Morrison's longtime girlfriend, Pam. We rehearsed in what had been the stables/carriage house. Once when it rained, I got a bad electric shock on the lips from the mic after stepping into a puddle on the floor from the leaky roof. The appliances in the house did not work, so I cooked meals in a popcorn popper. We gathered our loose change ---- we weren't gigging yet --- and bought bags of rice and split peas, carrots, onions, etc., and I cooked nourishing, cheap food for us. Hippie mama I was; after growing up in a family of nine, I knew how to cook in quantity for cheap, although the popcorn popper was a challenge. It took quite a bit longer to get things done, but it was no worse than camping at the 11,000-foot level in the Rockies waiting for Kahoutek to land and wipe out the West Coast.
When the band started playing, we had a variety of gigs, from outdoor concerts sponsored by a radio station in Maryland to being the house band at the Showboat on 18th and Columbia Road.
When the band had a gig at a national librarian's convention in a hotel ballroom, it was a very hot, humid day, and the beer was flowing. The librarians were dancing on the tables. I was singing "Purple Haze." Marty's drums were set up on a small riser, and the cymbal was not screwed down well. It came off its moorings and flew through the air like a flying saucer. I had my eyes closed and didn't see it coming. It knocked me out cold and sliced my nose open. I was lying on the floor, still out, when a friend/male groupie of mine (an older guy named Dan, who had an antique store featuring brass beds) came in the door as everyone was standing around wondering what to do. He scooped me up and tossed me in the back seat of his convertible and took me to an emergency room. It was too busy with knife fights, etc., so he took me to another hospital. The intern said he didn't want to sew my lip, and put on a butterfly bandage instead. I was instructed not to talk or sing for something like 10 days, and not to eat anything that couldn't be ingested through a straw. Dan took care of me, keeping me in milkshakes and combustibles. I still have a small scar that is showing up more as I age, along with the scar on my upper lip from a VW crash a couple of years later.
One gig at the Showboat especially stands out in my mind. We did the regular gig, then the after-hours part. Everyone was tired. It was my birthday, and my friend Karen brought me a turquoise satin skirt she'd stitched up. While most everyone else was drunk, I had ingested something mind-altering before the after-hours set. When it came time to play, Marty was on the B-3 rather than drums, and I think Junior was on the drums. The club started filling up. I particularly remember Willie the Pimp and his ladies, dressed in long gowns in graduating shades that matched their hair. I remember improvising the lyrics to a long blues.
The band broke up when it turned out payments hadn't been made on critical band equipment.
I worked for a time as an underage cocktail waitress at a club around the corner from the Showboat called The Bridge, which had formerly been the best French restaurant in D.C. (I believe the bakery is still there --- I recognized its name this year when I was there for the Inauguration). The bartender was 17, the head waitress was an underground abortionist; the maitre d' had a PhD in biophysics and had been a bodyguard for Malcolm X. I worked for him for a time, transcribing tapes for a book he was writing.
The club was owned by a player on the Redskins who was kicked off the team for gambling. It went into receivership. We were all owed back wages, so we ran the club for a month or so, doing music, poetry readings, and buying groceries at the local grocery so the French chef who was throwing knives at walls could earn his way back home, too.
I applied for a job with UPI as a copygirl, and had gone for the second interview when I got a call from home that my sister had been hit by a truck, and if I wanted to see her, I'd better get there. That was the end of my sojourn in D.C.
After the Inauguration, I took the Metro around to various places I vaguely remembered. I bought groceries at an international store near 18th and Columbia Road and cooked an awesome dinner for my hosts.
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Pause that refreshes
taken at Trout Lake Arts Fest
