Halloween in Hollywood

Spooky doings with set decoration in Santa Monica this year.

My college friends in Santa Monica have lived and worked in Southern California for more than twenty years. The home they live in is lovely and I would say modest, except that the neighborhood they are in is on the edge of Brentwood. So their house has zoomed in value ...

... and they are surrounded on all sides by Hollywood money and ethos.

At right the pretty Mediterranean Revival home owned by my friends P and J.

At the house across from them this has translated into an amazing Halloween display. Parenthetically, I should tell you the homeowner is a producer who purchased two adjacent homes on the street, tore them both down, built a new house that comes out to the sidewalk, rises two stories and includes a full basement. He and his wife just recently bought another adjacent two-million-dollar-ish lot to add a pool, or a tennis court, or a polo field, I forget which.

Just the beginning of the decor at this amazing Halloween House.

Now, the house also looks like a Hollywood set for a Halloween movie and includes not just the decor, but full lighting as well. Each day I was staying with my friends, Phyllis and John, more display and more lighting were added. On the actual day of Halloween, the homeowner brings in his boat and his cars and pulls them up in front and adds skeletons as the drivers, and lights those with baby spots.


It is in the right-of-way! It's everywhere! And it's lighted!

Arnold Schwarzenegger and his wife, Maria Shriver, came to trick-or-treat at this house twelve years ago, when the first such display went up, and now they make it an annual rite to stop by. Six hundred children also show up and so does a special squad of the Santa Monica Police Department, just to manage crowd control. In addition, the family hires private security to ensure that everyone makes it safely through the trick or treat line. Plus, if the neighbors want to call police, this makes it very easy for them to reach an officer.

It grows and grows, like the Incredible Growing Halloween House!

And they don't just give out candy. Another neighbor used to work for a carnival concession company and he always gave out Halloween teddy bears or some other stuffed animal to the trick or treaters, and this family has continued that tradition. So they will be giving out at least 600 little stuffed animals as well on Halloween night.

The kind homeowners gave me a favor from last year's Halloween event on a certain street in Santa Monica. Each year the Halloween bear is different.

It made me tired just to watch them work on the house every day I was there, not to mention what it must be like to live nearby on All Hallows Eve. They were still going at it like beavers when I headed back to left-wing Northern California where people would rather keep chickens in their backyards and dream Obama will make such exhibitions of conspicuous consumption against the law, while there are still greenhouse gases to be curbed, Iranian nuclear aspirations to be placated, and Michael Moore to be hired as a consultant to place an official cap on the right to the pursuit of happiness.

But the day before I departed I read a tiny item in what is left of the Los Angeles Times that put a sort of macabre coda to the story of the Hollywood Halloween House. It seems there was this man in Marina del Rey who was found dead on his balcony that Friday. He'd been dead on his balcony since Monday and by the time police found him he had been sitting in the warm California sun for a considerable time and was in a state of advanced decomposition.

He was in full view of neighbors everywhere since they, too, all had balconies. Why hadn't somebody called police? Neighbors said they didn't call because they thought the guy on his balcony who looked dead was just part of a Halloween display.

Which he was in a way. He just didn't realize it. Not being fully composed at the time.

Beware where you step on Halloween night in the Southland.

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Meet An Unusual Saint

I have a friend named Christine who has a very big heart and very good sense of humor. And if you sit with her any time at all she has you laughing so hard you are crying. Perhaps it is because she is Italian and from Long Island and her New York sense of humor is so familiar: almost all the famous comedians in the world come from New York, so the cadence of the New York voice helps the humor along quite a bit. Maybe it is in the water there. Or in this case, maybe it is in the water in the baptismal font.



I didn't know Christine long before she told me about St. Helen the Patron Saint of Parking. Not being a Catholic, I wasn't sure if I should laugh at this or not. Oh yes indeed, Christine said. St. Helen the Patron Saint of Parking is her late mother, Helen B., who, upon her death achieved beatification in order to look out for all of us women who, when shopping, find ourselves endlessly in search of a place to put the car.

It was funny enough to hear that she had elevated her mother to sainthood, and funnier still that this sainthood involved parking. But it got better. As my sister and I looked on, Christine went out to her car and produced St. Helen's prayer card, something with which, as Protestants, we were not familiar.

St. Helen's prayer card, not yet sanctioned by the Vatican, is laminated and carries a picture of a halo-ed St. Helen standing by--what else?--a car. The photo had originally been of Helen B. on her honeymoon, standing by the car she and Christine's father drove down to Florida. Of course she's smiling. She's on her honeymoon. And, since she was in Florida at the time, she was wearing a big straw hat.

With a little help from Photoshop, the hat became a halo, and the halo seems to turn Helen's sly honeymoon smile into something more angelic. On the back of the card is this prayer:

Dear Helen in Heaven
Help me find my space
I don't want to look
All over the place

Give me a good one
So I'll know where to steer
When it comes to parking
You're always near

Sweet Helen in Heaven
I don't pray a lot
But please help me find
A good parking spot
Amen

My sister and I were laughing pretty hard at this point. "It seems so sacrilegious," she said sotto voce to me as she wiped away her tears. "But I just can't stop laughing. It is such a funny thing to do with your late mother's picture."

Christine looks a lot like her mother, who died when Christine was just 21. Though the death took place a long time ago, the thought of it is still painful to Christine who will tell you that in a quiet moment. It was a heart attack or a stroke--I can't remember which--and one minute Helen was there, and the next she was gone. Christine didn't even have time to say goodbye.

At the root of almost all humor is pain. Christine dealt with hers by turning her mother into the Patron Saint of Parking. And the laughter that brings to each of Christine's friends helps to keep the memory of Helen a sunny one. What a lovely thing.

Christine insisted on giving me one of St. Helen's prayer cards to keep in my car.

And I've kept it there for years through various vehicles. It reminds me of Christine and her sense of fun. And it makes me think how each of us can take the clay of our sorrow and mold it in to something else, something that will make it easier for us to go forward with our lives--not forgetting, but no longer with tears.

So I keep St. Helen's prayer card in my car, and it makes me smile.

And one more thing. I never, ever, have to look for a parking place.



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Surprised by Two Old Friends

Phyllis and John on their wedding day.

My sister and I walked to a nearby Lutheran Church this Sunday morning. It was a different synod from the one we were raised in. But, it was only a couple of blocks away, it was a clear, cool, sunny morning, and we decided to give the church a try. It turned out to be a friendly place filled with nice people who welcomed us and an hour later we felt good as we walked out into the sunlight and headed for home.

I was planning to put on some jeans and wait to hear from my college friend Phyllis. She was in the Bay Area for the Cal game and we had planned to go to brunch before she and her family headed back to Santa Monica. I told her my sister was visiting and we would be at church from 9:00 'til 10:00 a.m. and we could go out after that.

About a quarter of a block into our walk home, some people in a huge red van up ahead of us started to wave. Gee that's a friendly church, I thought. Even after we leave, they are still saying hello/goodbye to us.

But it was my friend Phyllis, her husband John (also an old friend), their son Chris, (whom I last saw as a boy of three), her daughter Annie, (whom I last saw as a toddler), and John's brother and law partner, Bill, a big handsome Naval Academy graduate. How they found us, I leave to Phyllis's husband John, who as a lawyer, is also a great detective. My address, help from GPS and Google Maps, and the knowledge that I was a Lutheran were all the tools he needed. Never try to put anything over on John. He's on to you every time.

What fun we had! We all headed to the best pancake house in town and spent two hours, all talking at once. Phyllis and I knew each other as college undergraduates, then roomed together in Los Angeles while I got my Master's Degree at UCLA and Phyllis worked in the theater and dated John. John was Naval ROTC, doing his active duty in San Diego.

Phyllis found this dress at a Hollywood costume shop when she was volunteering there and working for an LA theater company. She brought it home to wear to a party and it was very glam on her.

Phyllis has a kind nature and is also incredibly creative. The creative sides of each of us have always clicked and her calm nature is a wonderful influence on the hyper me.

Today, over pancakes, I told the Phyllis-John kids about the time that John drove up to our apartment from his ship in San Diego with a strange story to tell. It seems he had been the Officer of the Deck all weekend and he'd had to deal with a disciplinary problem. One of his sailors had been on shore leave and had been arrested for soliciting. Not a good thing in any case, and to make it even more interesting, the sailor was dressed as a woman and was soliciting men.

John held his head in his hands. "Oh, they don't tell you what to do about this in Officer Training," he had moaned. Thirty years later, it was funny to recall.

Phyllis and John also lived near me when I was a journalist in Washington D.C. I was there for the birth of their first child Christopher, now a successful engineer. Their daughter Annie, born just before they moved to Los Angeles, now edits a magazine in D.C. Their two younger children weren't along for this visit.

An Easter visit with Phyllis, Christopher, and Annie. I was in Los Angeles from Washington D.C. to interview the cast of the ABC show "Dynasty."

These are people I really love and, though I lost touch with them briefly during my last few years in Florida, when we reunited, it was just as if we had never parted.

Intelligent and funny, they spent two hours making me laugh as they treated me to brunch and we traded silly tales of days gone by. They've worked hard and been lucky and have succeeded in their marriage, something so rare today. What fun we'll have now that I've finally rejoined them in California, the land where anything, even happiness, is possible.


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The Launching of the Humbug

The Humbug stands by for her christening.

My friends Leslie and Mike held a party today at the seaport in Redwood City on San Francisco Bay for the christening and launching of their new wooden boat the Humbug. I must confess I thought the name just meant the thing was going to have a grouch for a captain--and Mike didn't seem like a grouch--until Leslie explained.

Mike, with his curiously-named new wooden boat.

Mike gave her naming rights--it's a sea-faring tradition to have a woman name and christen a ship--and since she comes from a family of 49ers, she used her family roots to complete her task. It seems her great grandfather came to California in search of gold, and like many 49ers, ended up doing something else: in his case driving a stagecoach through Northern California's Humbug Valley. The valley itself had been named by 49ers who, having been told there was gold to be found there and then finding none, said the valley was just a "humbug." Humbug is an old term for hoax or jest. (Which is why old Scrooge said "Bah humbug!" He meant, to him, Christmas was just a joke, forever linking the word humbug, erroneously, with grouchiness.)

Thus it was that my friend Leslie came up with the boat's name.

Leslie and Mike stand proudly on the dock near their Humbug.

Leslie and I go back to junior high school: earlier than that if you count the time in grammar school that we met while competing in the Junior Olympics. We've been friends a long time. Mike, as you might imagine, came along somewhat later, but Leslie having embraced him during the long years of their marriage, I embrace him by the terms of friendship.

He's faced an illness this year, and she's faced the loss of her parents in recent years. They need some fun. It appears the Humbug will provide that, since she (the boat, not Leslie) comes with a trailer and can easily go along with them on their travels. A lovely thing.

As is also a custom, Leslie christened the boat with water from a special place: this is acceptable in lieu of champagne, which they thought might be too sticky--not to mention a waste of a good adult beverage. On a trip up North recently she brought back a tin of water from the Humbug Valley. And so it was, that the valley of her ancestors had a place in the christening of this 21st century wooden boat. She dunked Mike's new boat swab into the ceremonial christening tin:


Then with the seriousness appropriate to the occasion, Leslie gave the Humbug its first taste of the Humbug Valley along with its new moniker.



Life often puts us on stormy seas and there is nothing we can do except hang on and bail. When the sea grows calm again it is sometimes difficult to believe what we just endured. Sun sparkles on the water again, and all's right with the world.

For this new boat, there is no "Bah!" about it. May it go safely with its captain and crew through "rock and tempest, fire and foe." But, even better, may it always enjoy a smooth sail and a fair wind--Mike and Leslie don't plan on going too far out of sight of the shore.



O Trinity of love and power!
Our brethren shield in danger's hour;
From rock and tempest, fire and foe,
Protect them wheresoe'er they go;
Thus evermore shall rise to Thee,
Glad hymns of praise from land and sea.

Last verse of:
The Navy Hymn (1861)
William Whiting and
John B. Dykes

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Chowderhead Alert! A Good Bet Near Half Moon Bay

I've been looking for the perfect place between Santa Cruz and San Francisco, where a traveler can get a good seafood meal and a good view of the sea at the same time. Reasonable prices, good service. I've finally found all that at Sam's Chowder House on Highway 1, just north of Half Moon Bay.

The view from the patio of Sam's Chowder House. I sat inside where the view is just as fantastic and I was out of the wind.

It appears to have been there forever, but it is only a three-year-old restaurant. The food is beachy style and wonderful. I started with a house salad which was not your everyday house salad. The carrots had been julienned and the dressing tasted as if it had just been made. Had someone come down from San Francisco, just to make my salad? Nice job! Please, don't go back!

The interior of Sam's. Busy, even at 3:00 p.m. on a Sunday.

Then, I became bold and ordered their fish-and-chips, which came with so many fries I thought I was in heaven. There was coleslaw, too, and it was good, with just a dash of onion in it, something I had not tasted before. Their tartar sauce had an extra pinch horseradish. I think that was it and it was great.

Not able to stop there, I managed to eat a small dish of their homemade soft ice cream and felt I would never need eat again. My server, Mark, was a local kid who had finished college, moved away for a marketing job, and after four years in Ohio, or some such place, said hey, I miss Half Moon Bay, and returned home. He was a great server and it was just his third day!

The California Trail, just below Sam's has magnificent views of the Pacific. Also, it is free (and good exercise after eating at Sam's).

The restaurant sits on a bluff just above the Pacific, and when I finished dining I walked down to the California Trail, which sits just beneath Sam's. There, I could walk off some of my dinner, and watch the pelicans dive for theirs. I also saw what appeared to be a number of large pods of sea lions moving along almost as gracefully as dolphins, though they don't jump out of the water, as dolphins do, but they were just as well-choreographed. Sometimes, one or two would stop and look around and then move on. It seemed the sea lions were using the pelicans as look outs for schools of fish. Is that possible?



Sam's also has two SamCams you can click on to see if the fog bank is heading into Half Moon Bay, heading out to the Pacific, or not in sight. To find it you can click here: Sam's Web Cam

Check the SamCam before you head over there from the Santa Clara Valley or parts unknown. Sometimes its romantic to be caught there in the fog bank. And sometimes you just want the sun to be glowing on the Pacific. Sam's will make you happy either way--and that's cheap at twice the price.

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I'll Have Some Hammer With My Fill-up Please: A Letter From Hollywood by Steve Latshaw

Guest Post from Hollywood
by Steve Latshaw

Fred "the Hammer" Williamson, in a recent photo.

Robin writes: Steve Latshaw has been working in the film business since I knew him at WESH-TV in Orlando. It didn't take him long to see that his fortunes could be found out Hollywood way, and off he zoomed to California, where he, in very short order, became a successful screenwriter. One of the interesting things about living where he does, surrounded by the stuff that dreams are made of, is that you see the most interesting people, even when you're just runnin' around ... )

Only in Hollywood
by
Steve Latshaw

I had a weird celebrity sighting the other day. This happens a lot in Hollywood, particularly in Toluca Lake, which is my part of the woods.

I live near Warner Brothers Studios, the Original Bob’s Big Boy (the one the Beatles visited in 1965) and the Lakeside Country Club, a golf course where Hollywood types like Bob Hope, Forrest Tucker, Mickey Rooney and famed Los Angeles KMPC-AM disc jockey Dick Whittinghill used to hang. It’s all very old Hollywood, even though it is technically on the Valley side of the hill, in Burbank ( mostly) and even though they call it Toluca Lake. The lake in Toluca is actually also the lake in Lakeside Country Club. In the old W.C. Fields short The Dentist (1932), you can see Fields, in a fit of rage, toss his caddy right into it.

W.C. Fields having a quiet chat with his caddy in The Dentist, on the shores of lovely Toluca Lake.

So, I was filling up the gas tank at my neighborhood Chevron in Toluca Lake... ooh ... here’s another place to digress. In the Jerry Lewis movie The Errand Boy (1961) you can see Jerry himself, in a convertible, on Riverside, drive character actress Kathleen Freeman right in front of that Chevron, before turning into the Lakeside Car Wash, wherein much comedy ensues. The car wash still looks the same. The Chevron does not: in 1961 it looked like it would fit on the set of Mayberry RFD. Had a fruit stand in front. Today it’s all steel and glass and convenience store with ultra modern pumps and giant iced buckets of Red Bull energy drink.

So anyway, here we are, some forty-eight years after Jerry and Kathleen drive past that Chevron on Riverside and I’m there, pumping the fuel into my trusty Toyota Tundra pickup. And who should be fueling at the pump next to me? Why, Fred “The Hammer” Williamson, it was.

Fred "the Hammer" Williamson in the eponymous movie Hammer.

This man is one of the greatest and longest-running action heroes in movie history. Starting as a football player; then a football player in the 1970 movie M.A.S.H. (he also directed the football sequences); then star of lots of TV shows including "Julia" (1969-71) where he played Diahann Carroll’s boyfriend. Shortly thereafter, he became an international action star in such classic Blaxploitation films as Hammer (1972), Black Caesar (1973), That Man Bolt (1973), Hell Up In Harlem (1973), Three The Hard Way (1974), and all-star epics like Take A Hard Ride (1975) and the Italian World War II classic, Inglorious Bastards (1978)--Quentin Tarantino’s remake of that one is about to hit theaters.

The big guy in Robert Altman's M.A.S.H.

Fred Williamson continues to ride at the top of the star list and today, is the closest thing to John Wayne we have in movies. More recent viewers may remember his recent turns in From Dusk Till Dawn (1996) (as the cigar-chomping Vietnam vet turned vampire) and the 2004 film version of Starsky & Hutch. By the way, he got that “Hammer” nickname because he came down on his opponents like one.

Promo photo From Dusk Till Dawn.

So there he is next to me, filling up his red Hummer. For a moment, I think about calling him Fred “The Hummer” Williamson but sense that he might just kick my ass for that crack. But then I remember I still have a connection to this movie icon. Thanks to my pal and mentor, director Fred Olen Ray, I once had the opportunity to write a couple of Fred Williamson movies. One was called Submerged (2000), and involved the intentional crash-landing of a private plane in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. The movie was filled with intrigue and spies and (as you can imagine) lots of water. Fred played the driving U.S. Navy Commander who leads the effort to rescue the downed plane.

The other movie was a pure action-fest--a shoot-‘em-up filled with every war movie cliché I could think of. It was called Active Stealth (1999) and starred Fred as an Army Ranger Colonel opposite Daniel Baldwin.

Williamson with Daniel Baldwin in Active Stealth.

And so my mind wanders … back to 1999 and a day on the set of that film. I got to enjoy lunch with Mr. Fred Williamson and Mr. Fred Ray out at the old Van Nuys airport (it was doing military duty as an Army Ranger base). Fred Williamson has also been the director of many of his films—so it made for a memorable meal, just listening to The Two Freds top each other with stories about how they had “stolen shots” (getting film scenes without the proper permits) and pulled off amazing cinematic tricks for no money and in very little time.

Fred in his Blaxploitation period, a very successful one it was, too.

So back to the other day, and Fred Williamson and me buying gas at the Chevron. I paid for mine inside, then came out looking for him, feeling compelled to just say “Hi!” Unfortunately, he was back in his Hummer and gone before I had a chance. Oh, well.

So, not fifteen minutes later, I drove down the street to the Toluca Ralph's shopping center and went to Starbucks for coffee-to-go-with the cigars I was planning on smoking during the morning's road trip up the Coast.

Great minds think alike. I'll be darned if Fred "the Hammer" wasn't in Starbucks too, sitting down, relaxing with a coffee. An associate was with him, going over details on an upcoming film project.

I ordered my Venti-whatever-the-hell-you’ve-got-in-the-pot-for-under-$2.00, then hovered near Fred and his companion. I was waiting for a lull in their conversation so I could say something clever and cool.

So here comes the lull: Fred turns and sips his coffee, then sees me. He's got to be in his late sixties (editor’s note: he was born in 1938) but easily looks ten to fifteen years younger, in person.

An awkward silence ensues, so I speak.

STEVE: Mr. Williamson?

(This is how old school polite the guy is... he's in a tan suit, no tie—and I'm in road trip shorts and a black t-shirt. But HE stands right up, respectful to ME, if you can believe it, and shakes my hand).

FRED: Why, yes. What can I do for you?
(I go on.)

STEVE: My name is Steve Latshaw. A few years back I wrote a couple of your films.

FRED: Really? Which ones?

STEVE: Well, one of them was called Active Stealth.

He grinned at the recollection. Obviously he was fond of the film. He had a damned good part. Or maybe he was pretending to remember it. Nice of him, either way.

FRED: Yes... I remember. Good movie. I played an army officer. Captain Reynolds.

I pause for a minute, suddenly not remembering what the hell I was going to say. I’m taken aback by the guy’s graciousness. I’m still a punk movie geek from the Midwest corn fields. He doesn’t have to be nice to me, let alone stand up to hear me chatter. But he has. And he does. So I better say something.

So I went on to talk about how he, Fred Williamson, had taught me an important writing lesson earlier in my career. Back in April of 1999, the first day on the Active Stealth set, I had been introduced as the writer to Mr. Williamson by producer Andrew Stevens. Andrew, son of Stella (she’s in the original Nutty Professor (1963) with Jerry Lewis and Girls! Girls! Girls! (1962), with Elvis). Andrew himself is a former actor (The Bastard (1978)) and had now become a successful producer. On this picture, he was doing double duty as producer/actor, as a favor to the unit. And everyone liked to have him around because it was always a bet to see how fast Andrew could get through his lines. Nearly always in one take.

Anyway, we were standing outside the 20th Century stages, off Highway 170 in the Valley, where there was a standing submarine set. That set, crowded as it was, was being used as both the bridge of Captain Stevens' aircraft carrier (you can also enjoy this set and this footage in the recent Wesley Snipes feature The Marksman (2005)) and as Williamson's communications room. Anyway, Andrew introduces me to Fred “the Hammer” as the movie’s writer. Fred raises an eyebrow. Andrew grins and walks away.

Fred eyes me for a minute. Then he says: “You’re the writer, eh? I want to talk to you.” He quickly pulls me aside.

“Mr. Latshaw, have you read this script?”

I try to make a joke. “I’m hoping to get around to that…”

Fred hands me his “sides”—a miniature printout of his scenes and lines for that day. He points to a particularly wordy paragraph I’d written. “Read that. Out loud. All at once, without taking a breath. Like a cold reading.”

Cold readings are auditions where the auditioning actor has never seen the script. Ever.

So I clear my throat and read the dialog. Wow. It was like a never-ending compound sentence, a paragraph long. And it felt like I’d never read it before. What part of my ass had I pulled this from? Cold reading, Latshaw. Camera… speed… ACTION!

So I read this:

"You stop interfering with the progress of the insertion phase and provide the requested air support for my ground team or I will run this up the chain to central command so fast it will make your stars and bars spin and you lose your breakfast on a regular and most annoying basis."

You get the idea. Anyway, I stumble through it, gasping for breath, looking and sounding nothing like a hard-as-nails military officer. And sounding everything like the novice writer I was.

I nodded. “Um,” (I cleared my burning throat). “ Too many words.”

He nodded back. "You screwed it up. Me, I’m up there on the set, camera in my face. I can’t afford to screw it up. I have to say that line, perfectly, while the crew is waiting and we are burning film."

He went on to good-naturedly recommend I read all of my dialog out loud to myself, first, last and always, before locking the script.

“Read every line out loud. It may read OK in the script but saying the words gives you a sense of how they feel, where the actor has to breathe, etc. Just read them out. And if you still like them, then leave them in.”

I nodded, listening carefully, wishing I’d been taking notes. And then, surprisingly, he said some nice things about the script and his character. He liked the twists and turns and thought I had a lot of talent. And then Andrew returned. Fred patted me on the back and they headed back to set, as Andrew began chattering away about something, as usual, a mile-a-minute.

So back to the future. Back to Present Day, Starbucks, Toluca Lake, Pass Avenue. Saturday. I’m still standing there with Fred Williamson. I tell him this story and he laughs, remembering the encounter, remembering those heavyweight lines.

I told him I'd promised myself I'd thank him if I ever ran into him again. He laughed again and said, "It worked for you, then? You learned something?"

I nodded. "Yes. I learned something. And thanks. A great pleasure meeting you again."

He smiled. "Me, too. Take care."

A nice and unexpected little moment. Only in Hollywood.



Steve Latshaw on IMDB

Fred "the Hammer" Williamson on IMDB
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Dad's Work Clothes

Dad's winter work clothes did extra duty one summer when we used them to make a scarecrow to try to scare the crows from eating his peaches. Not sure if the scarecrow worked but it did give my sister (at right) and me a chance to show off our new matching dresses.

My mother has a house full of stuff that needs to go either to charity or (more appropriately) to a dumpster, so lately I've been asking her from time to time if there is anything she has that she would like me to get rid of. It was much to my surprise when, a few days ago, she said she had a few things.

They were my father's work clothes.

Worn, torn, spattered with paint, frayed at the collars and thinning at the knees, they were now washed and neatly folded for the Goodwill. Truth be told, they are in such bad shape, Ted Kaczynski in his living-in-the-Montana-wilderness phase would likely have rejected them as too used up.

Dad washing the car. It's raining, which is why he's wearing an old work hat and jacket with his shorts!

"Your father won't be working in the yard anymore," my practical mother said. We now realize he was out there, working in the yard and trying to please her about two years beyond his abilities to do so. It wasn't until we discovered last year that he had a fractured pelvis from an unknown fall that we knew it to be true.

All my life Dad has spent his free time working outside. When he was a young man, working at his first professional engineering job, he thought nothing of spending two years of weekends building my parents' first home.

That's my sister up there in the wood frame of our first house. Never fear, she's being held firmly from behind by the large hand of my father, the home's contractor, chief carpenter, and engineer.

He framed it in redwood. That was okay then and he knew the first rate lumber was bug resistant and would last forever--though the house has recently been torn down anyway by some rich people for a McMansion. Dad probably still has the work clothes he wore on that project. He never threw anything away. But, later, he had summer work clothes he used for hot weather duty.

Dad, looking natty in his car wash work clothes. From afar you can't see how frayed they are.

And, he had even more abbreviated versions he used for lawn mowing and fruit-pick-up duty in the heat of a Bay Area summer.

Dad, working as usual, at our first house, lawn mower in background ... the push kind.

In the spring and fall, in later years, he had jeans and an old sweatshirt he wore. They are in the pile my mom just gave me to give away.

The jeans-and-sweatshirt work clothes were used when he used to walk the neighbor's dog Sunny. The owner had cancer and he didn't want the young lab to be bored while he was ill. Sunny is old and sick now, as is my father, and they are still friends.

So, of all the junk that needs to be disposed of at my parents' home, Dad's work clothes are the junk I least want to give away. They are in the trunk of my car now. But I don't think they will go to the Goodwill. At least not yet.

I want to have them with me, just a while longer.

That's me, dressed up as Dad, having a laugh.



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Bells on a Truck

It was a curious-looking thing that sat in the church parking lot and caught my eye.

I was driving along a main artery in my hometown, on my way to the YMCA, when I passed something in the parking lot of the First Presbyterian Church of Mountain View, California that made me decide to turn around and investigate.

A closer look simply increased my curiosity.

It was a semi-truck that appeared to be packed with church bells. How many times in your life have you seen a bunch of big old church bells on a semi?

The bells are visible through the heavy glass truck windows, which also reflect the surrounding sky, giving the whole thing a very heavenly aspect.

I swung into the church parking lot and pulled out my ever-present digital camera and took a few pictures. It appeared to be a sort of a carillon-on-a-truck, with Dutch words on some places, a Web Site advertised on the side and back of the truck, and a ladder placed beside the glass enclosure so the carillon player--presumably--could mount his curious perch.(I later learned that a carillon player is known as a carillonneur.)

The stairs alongside the vehicle.

I went on with my journey and my workout and didn't get the chance to look up the bells-on-a-truck information until later in the day.

It is a carillon on wheels, sponsored by a bell making/bell selling company in Ohio called Chime Masters. The company uses a forge in the Netherlands (Royal Eijsbouts Bell Foundry, Asten, The Netherlands--hence the Dutch writing on the truck) to produce many of its bells. The portable carillon weighs 5.5 tons from tenor bell to treble, making it the heaviest portable bell rig in North America. (Are there any others to compare this with???)



As I further investigated I learned that the First Presbyterian Church would be holding three carillon concerts using the Chime Masters carillon on wheels and that the public is invited. I resolved to come and hear the music of the bells.

I love carillon music and wish each church had a set of bells the way all churches once did. In Florida, I lived near Rollins College and the college chapel had a wonderful set of bells. The bells played hymns on Sunday morning and many other days of the week at midday. I found myself humming the hymns I heard throughout the day.

There are many ways to spread the Word of God and the joy of music is one of the most under-utilized of those ways in the modern world. So, I say hooray for Chime Masters, hooray for the First Presbyterian Church, and hooray for the creative minds that came up with this fascinating way to spread the music of church bells around the ribbon of highways in America.



I thought it would be fun to take my father, who was raised in the Presbyterian Church, and whose mind needs focus to remember what church is all about. Then I remembered that he can't hear anything at all anymore: his deafness is such that even church bells cannot penetrate.

I'll go for him to the concert. And hope the carillonneur wears good ear protection when he plays, so he does not end up as deaf as my father.



Chime Masters Web Site

First Prebyterian Church Goes Heavy Metal

First Presbyterian Church Web Site

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Dad Disappears and Comes Back to Us

I took this picture of Dad this spring with the mustard of Grant Road Farm behind him. His face is obscured by the shadows of late afternoon.

I was just walking into my house from my strength training class at the YMCA, when my cell phone started ringing at 7:20 on Tuesday night. It was Dad's caregiver telling me there was something wrong with Dad and they had called 911.

I discovered I could cover the 9/10 mile from my place to theirs in about two minutes. I arrived just at the EMTs were pulling in in their big white fire truck.

Dad was on the floor near his bed. His eyelids were fluttering and he wasn't aware of his surroundings. The EMTs took his blood pressure and it was really low, so they lifted him onto the bed and raised his legs. He had already begun to come around by then and waved at me when he saw me. Relief.

As they put Dad on the bed he told the firemen that he "had just returned from military service" and they smiled. "We've been here before," one said. They were three big, nice young men and the sum of their ages was likely less than Dad's total. Later two more arrived. It was a pretty large group for Dad's bedroom: five EMTs, Dad, Mom, me and his caregiver.

Dad's blood pressure began to come back. His blood oxygenation was 99% and his heart beat was strong, so we didn't take him to the hospital. After they left he looked at me and said: "What are you doing here in the middle of the night?" And then he went to sleep.

It seems he had been in his wheelchair and his caregiver was removing his shoes so she could put him to bed when he just slumped over. My mother suggested--not too wisely--that she and the caregiver lift him into bed. Since neither of these women weighs much more than 100 pounds that idea didn't work. The caregiver just eased him down onto the floor and put a pillow under his head, while she screamed at my mother to "please call 911." My mom hates to do that because she thinks you only die if you go to the hospital.

Anyway, we got through this one and this morning Dad asked me "how long he'd been away."

Long enough to frighten the heck out of me, and that was too long. But he's back with us today. And that's the best we can hope for.
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California's House of Mystery

The Winchester Mystery House today.

Have your heard of the Winchester Mystery House? It is one of the most famous haunted houses in America and can be found just minutes from the Mineta San Jose Airport, and just a few minutes further from San Francisco International.

The house was built by Sarah Winchester, a woman who inherited a half interest in the Winchester Repeating Arms Company, and felt her family was cursed because the fortune had come from guns. She owned a lot of acreage in the Santa Clara Valley. Los Altos, the town where I'm living now, was built on land purchased by the railroad from Mrs. Winchester.

She was born Sarah Pardee and married William Winchester in 1862. He was the son of Oliver Winchester, the founder of the Repeating Arms Company, a firm that did a lot of grim business during the U.S. Civil War. As America counted its war dead, Sarah and her husband had just one child who lived only a few weeks. In 1880, Oliver Winchester died and in 1881 Sara's husband died. The wills of the two men left Sarah a wealthy but lonely woman.

It was the era of spiritualism and Sarah, having a fortune estimated at $30 million dollars, found herself a psychic who told her to go west and build a house to please the spirits. As long as construction continued, said the psychic, the spirits would be satisfied and Sarah would live.

She moved to San Jose, California and bought a farmhouse and for the next 38 years, construction on the house never stopped. To those of us who've suffered through the home renovation process, its hard to believe old Sarah, who could have afforded the best, would have put up with all that aggravation for all those years. But she did. And that is what makes the house so strange. Stairways rise to nowhere. Doors open into walls. Towers rise where no towers are called for. Anything--to keep the builders at work.

Needless to say, when Sarah Winchester died, at the age of 83, in 1922, it wasn't the kind of home you could flip, as they say today.

And so it became an attraction.

A photo of the house as it looked during the lifetime of Mrs. Winchester. She can be seen in the small photo above in front of the house in her carriage.

The most interesting news of late about the house, according to the San Jose Mercury News, is that Andrew Trapani, who went to school in the Santa Clara Valley and later made the Lionsgate film The Haunting in Connecticut is planning a movie about the house. If he wants to make it a hit, I hope he'll follow the lead of classic film director Jacques Tourneur (Cat People, I Walked with a Zombie, Leopard Man, Out of the Past) and make it a scary movie in which the fear is caused by what he doesn't show.

In the meantime, I'm planning to visit the old house in the coming days--just to see if any spirits are still roaming there) and I just wanted to let you know, in case ... something happens and ... I don't come back.

Photos courtesy of the Winchester Mystery House.

Read Robin's Part Two on the Mystery House

Winchester Mystery House on the Web

Mystery House to Star in Movie


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Google Bombs and Staying Hip

On an endless drive to Redwood City (spotted only three redwoods, all of recent origin) I had plenty of time to catch an interview on NPR's Talk of the Nation with author Bill Wasik about "going viral" on the Internet and other peculiar On-line trends. These included flash mobs (which Wasik invented), to Google bombs and geo caching. You probably already know everything about this stuff if you spend every hour of your day on the Internet. Since I don't it was all very interesting to me. Especially the Google bomb.


In the Google bomb, you and your friends and your friends' friends etc. all agree to Google a name, say, that of your ex-husband with a word, say, "philander". If this idea gets emailed around enough, these two words become linked together by Google's search engine protocol and voila! When someone totally out of the loop Google's "philander", up comes the name of, surprise, surprise, your ex-husband. What a hoot! Mostly this was used, however, by naughty 'netters who Google bombed George Bush with words like "lousy" and "worst president".
(More About the Google Bomb)

I realized in listening that I had accidentally Google bombed myself (but in a good way) by calling my blog "Robin Chapman News" because, with repeated blogs over time, I have linked the word "news" with my name. That's why people who knew me as a news anchor are now having an easier time finding my blog, which, I must admit was a much better outcome than I actually intended. I only called my blog Robin Chapman News because robinchapman.com was already taken by an English poet.

Funny things happen, though, to the items one places on ones blog. I have an old bus poster on one of my Web pages about my years at KGW-TV that includes me and three other KGW-TV anchors from long ago. Recently, one of my readers copied it to his Facebook page. From there someone emailed it to one of the other anchors on the bus poster, who emailed it to a man who used to be a news photographer at KGW-TV, who then emailed it to me with a note saying he thought it might "bring back fond memories". Hey wait. It started on my page in the first place!!! (How many degrees of separation was that?)

The bus poster that took a circuitous route on the Internet.

As to flash mobbing and geo caching, you can Google those. One involves going viral with some sort of quirky meeting, like everyone going to the rug department at Macy's and saying the same thing to the clerks. The other is a sort of Internet/GPS treasure hunt. At least I think that's what these things are.

I'd like to be hip enough to think of something that will "go viral", on the 'net the way the Jib Jab guys did with their "This Land" animation (and get rich in the process and they did). But ever since, after almost a decade in Washington D.C., I emerged having to ask a person in my Florida newsroom who Arrowsmith was, the prognosis may not be quite as good as I'd like.

(Bill Wasik on NPR's Talk of the Nation)

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