Daily Excerpt: Tucker & Me (Harvey) - Riding the Wild Mattress

 

Excerpt from Tucker & Me (Harvey) -

RIDING THE WILD MATTRESS

 

            I was a planned Cesarean birth. The doctor gave my mother a choice of several dates for delivery, and she picked the seventeenth. This was because her birthday was on the seventeenth, albeit in a different month. This was part of an inordinate role the number seventeen played in our family.         

            I was brought home as a baby to our residence in the Los Angeles suburb of Monterey Park. I only lived there until I was two years old, but it was always referred to as the Hermosa Vista House, in reference to the name of the street. The street number was 417, thus continuing an odd streak of the number seventeen in our family residences.

After that house, we lived in the city of Alhambra, with a street address of 1717. The next home we moved to the address was simply 17. Ultimately, the family settled in another town, where the house numbers were 1728. That’s an awful lot of seventeens for one family.

            The first home I remember was on Los Higos Street in the city of Alhambra, another Los Angeles suburb, where I lived from the time I was two until I became a teenager. It was a home I loved, and perhaps one of the most unique houses I’ve ever encountered. It was a two-story brick home that was built in 1935 by a contractor as his personal residence. At the time it was built, it was the only house on the block, and it was situated among an enormous colony of orange groves.

            The home formally faced a north/south street, but over the years a long driveway was built on the east/west cross street, and that was where we typically entered and exited the property. Other homes were eventually built up around this house, which was located pretty far from the adjacent streets. We had what is known as an “easement” on the eastside of the property. This area ultimately became the driveway of another home, but the easement allowed us to legally access the driveway as a walkway to get to and from our house.

            The neighbors at that house in front were not fond of the easement and would stare at us when we strolled down their driveway to our home. There’s a thing about easements that you should know. In order to maintain your legal right to traverse the land, you must use it regularly. If you didn’t, the neighbors could claim that you had lost your right to move through their property. In other words, use it or lose it.

            My mom was somewhat obsessed with the easement, using it whenever she could and insisting that we do likewise. She would regularly announce that we must use the easement more often in order to preserve our legal standing. This standing was never actually challenged, but who knows, maybe that was because of my mother’s diligence in maintaining it.

            One of the unique features of the house was that the upstairs and downstairs were self-contained, in that there was a bedroom, a bathroom, a kitchen, and much living space on each floor. There were two separate staircases, one indoors and one outdoors. Thus, two separate families could live quite comfortably there, one on the top, and one on the bottom.

            The interior staircase was the venue for what became one of the signature activities of the home. It was called, “Riding the Wild Mattress.” Now I know what you’re thinking, and no, it was not that. The inside staircase was very wide and carpeted. I don’t remember how it came to be, but at some point, I came up with a plan. The idea was to take a single-sized mattress, place it at the top of the stairs, and ride it down to the bottom, sort of like a magic carpet.

One of the key challenges of this ride was that there was a solid brick wall at the end of the staircase. After a few incidents in which there were some crash landings, it was decided among my fellow mattress-riders that we would actually need two mattresses—one to ride, and another propped up to cushion the brick wall at the landing.

            There were various experiments that went on with my friends and other kids in the extended family, but ultimately it was determined that in order to optimize the ride’s effect, we needed to do certain things. First, we placed a slick, satin-style fitted sheet on the bottom of the mattress to create a faster glide. We learned to limit it to two riders at a time, with at least one “pusher,” who would enhance the natural speed of gravity by taking a running start and propelling the mattress and riders down the stairs.

We would do this endlessly, and with the energy of youth, we never seemed to get tired. We did not have the ability to clock our speed with a radar gun, but I feel pretty confident in saying we got up to speeds far faster than any sane parent would have allowed.

            Decades later, I ran into a friend who had taken part in this homemade amusement park ride. Literally the first thing he said to me was, “Ride the Wild Mattress!” This was one ride that created a long-lasting imprint, and I’m kind of glad there was no one else within earshot when he greeted me with this phrase.

            I remember my father being around during the very early parts of our living in this house, but he ultimately moved on and ended up in Tucker. Thus, my formative years were spent primarily in this house with my mom. Being a single mother back then was unusual. All of my friends had both their mother and father at home. There was a stigma to it back then, unlike today when being a single mother has evolved into somewhat of a badge of honor.

            I grew up in that house and went to Baldwin elementary school for kindergarten through eighth grade, where I got a fine education and had a heck of a good time. My mother went through a series of transitory relationships, two of them culminating in marriage. It seemed that my mom would use marriage as a form of dating. Most people would date first and then, if things went well, get married. My mom tended to get married first, and then go through the dating process to determine if it was, in fact, a good match.

            There was Gabe, a Hispanic man who was quite nice to me. He spoke Spanish and was teaching me how to count in that language during the time he and my mom were married. I only made it up to forty, which should give you a pretty good indication of how long that marriage lasted. My one regret about Gabe going on his way was that if he had stood the test of time, I would have no doubt been fluent in Spanish by now, which would have been great.

            Then there was Bobby the Butcher, so named because he was, well, a butcher. My mother had been dating him for only a short while when they announced they would be taking a little trip together. I was to stay with my beloved grandmother, so I really didn’t think much about it.

            When they returned from this journey, we all stood in the large master bedroom while they were telling me about the trip. My mom said we should all go into the closet because she wanted to tell me something. Now mind you, this was a large walk-in closet, but I didn’t understand why we should go in there to talk, but go in there we did. The three of us held hands, and my mom told me that they had gotten married on the trip, which I learned later was a trip to Las Vegas, and that Bobby was to be my new father. I never found out why we went into the closet to announce the big news, and I wish now I had asked.

            So, a few problems here. First, even as a young child, I knew that it was foolish to get married after having known each other such a short time. Second, it sure would have been nice if my mom had solicited my feelings about making such a move prior to doing so. Third, I didn’t like surprises then, and I don’t like them now, particularly surprises of this nature. My reaction was to throw myself on the bed and yell, “Oh, no!” The irony of this was that it wasn’t long before my mom was doing that same thing in response to the marriage.

            That closet was also the home of my mother’s furs. Back in those days, women regularly wore actual animal furs without getting chastised and splashed with paint. My mom even had a mink stole, which I will describe for you, even though it will be hard for younger readers to believe me. A mink is a small, furry animal slaughtered to make into clothing, but the head and the legs were left intact. Thus, it was just as if you were wearing an actual dead animal.

Typically, three of these minks would be used to complete the mink stole. The one part of the animal that was removed was the teeth, and a clipping device was inserted into the mouth. This allowed you to clip multiple minks together by attaching the mouth of one mink to the tail of the next one, thus shaping an oval that would then be worn around a woman’s neck. This was, indeed, considered high-style back in the day.

We had a very sweet-natured dog named “Mopsie” at the time. Every once in a while, when I was left unsupervised in the house, which was a lot, I would take out one of my mom’s minks from a drawer in the closet. I know you must be thinking that I had some kind of fetish, but not so. It was simply a creative device I used to create a fun game of chase with my dog. First you must realize that Mopsie did not have an understanding that the mink creature was long-dead. To her, this was a living interloper to be despised and if possible, destroyed.

As I ran around the house with the mink held high in my hands, Mopsie was right behind me in hot pursuit. She would jump as high as she could, and at the apex of the jump, would snap her jaws shut in an attempt to bag the mink. I would run up and down the stairs, leap over the chaise lounge, hop onto the bed, and engage in every other acrobatic and evasive maneuver I could think of with Mopsie barking relentlessly, always right on my heels no matter the obstacle.

She was utterly furious at the audacity of this mink, thinking it could show itself without suffering grievous sanctions. It is probably best for both Mopsie and me she never got ahold of the mink, because she would have torn it to shreds. These furs were expensive, and I wouldn’t have wanted to explain that one to the insurance company representative. She could not stand the animal that lived in that drawer in the closet.

As with Gabe, Bobby was also quite nice to me, but there was one main problem: he was a drunk, and a nasty one at that. Further exacerbating this situation was the fact that Bobby was about six-foot-four and two-hundred thirty pounds. So, to recap, a mean drunk that size who was highly skilled in the use of knives and cleavers—what could go wrong? This is without even getting into his rifle and shotgun collection stored in the closet. Luckily, the marriage to Bobby ended before he could kill us, but there were, shall we say, some “incidents.”

            In one case, Bobby had failed to come home on time. We had learned that when this happened, he was typically not out collecting for the Red Cross. Rather, he was delayed as the result of being “thirsty.” We watched from the second story window as he finally arrived in his car. He walked toward the back steps, and my mom remarked, “He’s crawling!” As a young child, I didn’t fully understand this because he appeared to me to be walking rather than crawling, but my mom insisted he was crawling.

As we moved toward the back door where Bobby was to enter, there was a very large crash, and even without seeing what caused it, it was pretty clear to both of us that Bobby had felt, at least for that night, that breaking down the door would be a better alternative than going to all the trouble of turning the door knob.

            My mom and I weren’t going to wait around to see what Bobby’s intentions were, so we hightailed it down the opposite stairway from the one Bobby had used. Now, there were two ways we could flee at this point, either down the long driveway or via the easement. You guessed it, we headed for the easement. It was nice to know that as we ran for our lives from Bobby the Butcher, we were also actively engaging our legal right to traverse our neighbor’s driveway, thus preserving our easement.

We ended up two blocks away at an older couple’s home, and they were kind enough to take us in and let us call the authorities. We later met the police back at the house. Bobby was still there, albeit in much more contrite form. As was typical with the police in those days for domestic situations, they told Bobby to leave for the night, and if they had to come back they would kick his ass and take him to jail. Bobby chose the option of leaving and not returning that night.

            I recall my mom and Bobby divorcing shortly after that. I liked Bobby, and thought he was a pretty good guy, except when he was drunk, and that was a lot of the time. I guess it would be somewhat like saying a car was really good, except that it didn’t have an engine; definitely a fatal flaw.

            About the only time Bobby and I would clash was when I would “dispute his word.” This meant whenever I questioned anything he said or indicated that what he was saying was not accurate. I literally asked him, “You mean whenever you are obviously wrong, I’m not supposed to mention it?”

He said, “That’s right.”

“What about if I see you’re about to make a big mistake? Am I still not to speak up and tell you you’re wrong and are headed for disaster?”

He said, “That’s right.”

Well, there’s not much you can say to such a person, so I tried not to dispute his word, even when his words were wrong and, often in Bobby’s case, slurred. I can’t end this part about Bobby without telling the story of how I found out that he slept in the nude.

            My mom and Bobby had their bedroom on the second floor, and I had my room on the first floor. To that point in my young life, even having lived in California for all of my first ten years, I had not experienced an earthquake. Early one morning while we were all still asleep, the earthquake decided it was time. Having lived through many earthquakes since then, my memory of it is as the worst I’ve ever felt. Further complicating matters was the fact that I wasn’t really sure what it was, but I knew it wasn’t good.

            I jumped out of bed and headed toward the bottom of the stairs. I had not made a decision yet whether I was going to run outside or head up the stairs to my mom, when I saw him. An image that will, as FDR once said, “live in infamy.” As I looked up to the top of the stairs, there was Bobby the Butcher, standing there in all his naked glory, and he was motioning me to come up to him. I flew up the stairs, perhaps even faster than we went down while riding the wild mattress.

            Looking back on it, I realize that my mom’s initial reaction was to scream my name, at which point Bobby, bless his heart, took off to fetch me. Truth be told, I would have been much safer exiting the door next to the stairs and getting outside, instead of heading upstairs, but everybody’s heart was in the right place on that long-ago morning, so I’m at peace with it. However, the sight of Bobby the Butcher standing at the top of the stairs is an image that will never leave me. Between the wild mattress rides and the earthquake incident, this particular staircase was a pretty big part of my memories of that house.

            I really loved growing up in that home. Other than the possible exception of the house I’ve lived in as an adult for the past almost thirty years, it is my favorite home. When I graduated from eighth grade, it was time for me to move on to high school. My mother was concerned about some of the emerging gang influences in that area, so she made a decision for us to move to another local community for my high school years. The plan was for us to rent during those years, lease the house, and then return to live in the home after I graduated from high school four years later.

            When we made the move to the new apartment, my mom’s furs made the move with us, but sadly, Mopsie did not. It turns out the apartment allowed dead animals, but not live ones. My mother was not very specific about how Mopsie was dispositioned, but alluded to finding a good situation for her. Knowing my mom as I do, my money would be on an ending for Mopsie that was not so good.     

            I thought then, and I still think now, that it was a lame-brained idea. As usual, nobody asked me what I thought of the plan. Rather, I returned from my annual trek to Tucker, and when we pulled into the driveway, I saw a real estate sign. That was my first knowledge that I would no longer be living in the only home I had ever known. When I saw that sign, I maxed out on every obscenity I had in my teenage vocabulary, which even then was fairly substantial.

            Even worse, about a year into this four-year plan, my mom sold the house for a song, that song being $50,000. Again, I was not consulted, and again, I thought it was a terrible, half-baked idea. Since my brother and I were the only two siblings, there was always an unspoken understanding that one day we would inherit the house, and live there, each with our own separate living quarters, yet together as brothers on the same property. There would not have even been a fight over the upstairs/downstairs issue. I liked the top floor, and he liked the bottom floor best.

About eight years later, the house was sold again for—wait for it—$750,000. How could it have gone up so much in such a relatively short amount of time? Well, that’s southern California real estate for starters, but the real key was that the lot was designated as an “R-3.” This meant approval to build multi-family housing on it was already in existence. You might think maybe my mom didn’t know this, but no, she knew it, and spoke of it often over the years.

The fact that I was proven right in my thinking about this house was not much consolation. The saddest thing of all? The house was, in fact, bulldozed to make way for condominiums. You got that? Condos!

There is a classic short film made by Laurel and Hardy called The Music Box. In this movie, the boys attempt to move a piano up a very long and daunting outdoor staircase. Although the film was made in 1929, the actual staircase is still there, and I have visited it a few times. At the bottom of the stairs, there is a historical marker from the City of Los Angeles commemorating the site.

If I had my way, there would be a historical sign placed where my old house was, to indicate the location where the wild mattresses were first ridden. I think of that house quite often, and I believe I always will.

Honorable Mention, Hollywood Book Festival

For more posts about Andrew Harvey and his book, click HERE.

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