Pocket Change

(Giant Donut kind of like this, but different)

We have a handful of nickels,

pennies and dimes between us

to go to Winchell’s -

the donut shop

with the gigantic tractor tire

in the parking lot

painted like a chocolate donut

with a lot

of sprinkles on top.

Five cents for cake

or plain or raised,

eight cents for raspberry

custard

or lemon-filled,

glazed.

Making a choice

is sweet agony

hopping in place

(one foot

to the other)

barefoot

on the other side

of the glass case.

We pedal our bikes furiously

with a hunger

deep and craving,

an urgency borne all on the wings

of sacred

pocket change.

I remember when they raised the price of specialty donuts from eight to eleven cents a piece. That’s all we could talk about for days! It seemed like a terrific injustice. In our minds, we were the core clientele of this tiny, paint-peeling little donut shop on Saticoy, just around the corner from Jellico. Executing our donut runs almost exclusively on a Saturday, we were accordingly unaware of the week day early morning business they must have been doing just fine without any of us penny-pinching neighborhood kids.

Winchell’s is an international donut chain. We didn’t know this. We thought Mr. Winchell was the old guy in the stained white apron and the little paper hat behind the counter.

Donuts 2011: 89 cents each

"The Donut King"

Verne H. Winchell

October 15, 1915 - November 26, 2002

Founder of Winchell's Donuts in Temple City, CA, 1948, graduate of Alhambra High School, CA.

* Excerpt from Station Wagon Wars ~ Growing Up in the 60s by cTanner

Tax Man

(circa. 1961 ~ Danny & Cindy in the framed portrait, beast calculator on desk to his far right, clip-on bow tie because he didn't like to tie ties)

My dad was a CPA. Attending school on the G.I. bill, it was a career choice suggested to him by one of his professors at BYU. Flattered by the generous recommendation, he switched his major forthwith and forfeited completing try-outs for the football team. He had already been issued a locker and his new Cougar uniform.

Tax season began in January. We didn't run out to greet his tail-fin Cadillac coming up the driveway anymore as he stayed later and later at the office. When he did arrive, he didn't play or wrestle with us, but simply flopped onto the couch with a whistle or a groan and asked us to take off his shoes. "Hoo-wheee!" he'd exclaim wiggling his stockinged toes, "these doggies are tired!" Sadly, we went to bed without papa's thrilling home-spun stories of adventure and intrigue following the Lewis & Clark westward expedition, his big voice rising and falling with the pathos of the moment - be it blood-thirsty Indians or enraged grizzlies waiting for us at the end of another harrowing canoe ride through killer rapids.

By late March, he was bringing home arm loads of files from the office and staying up until the wee hours of the morning every night. Mama often stayed up really late then too, vacuuming or playing the piano or reading when they normally would have both been asleep. It was a time of general tension and excitement we little kids only vaguely understood because our daily routine had changed.

He used an old hand-crank calculator about the bulk of a 6-slice bagel toaster on steroids. A veritable cast iron beast with enamel-topped metal keys, it made a wonderful racket as his fingers attacked the number keys and pulled the lever working his endless figures. He hardly even glanced at the thing; his fingers knew the numbers just as intimately as his head did.

We had an old black wall phone in the service porch (aka laundry room) off the kitchen that was reserved for his business calls. We kids were not allowed to answer it. Ever. When my mom answered it (first always drying her hands on her gingham apron), she used a funny, sing-songy "different lady" voice. I sincerely wished I could answer the phone once in a while, but it was a little too high for me to reach properly. I knew I could yank the receiver down by pulling on the coiled cord. However, this was just a knowledge I possessed without benefit of actual application. Some rules in childhood were strictly and absolutely established. While I don't remember the verbiage used, it must have been wondrously impressive because even hearing the phone ring gave me a little shiver in my stomach and made me freeze in my tracks: "DO NOT RESPOND - MUST NOT TOUCH -"

I was much more impressed with my papa's collection of sleek, shiny fountain pens.

Gleaming and handsome (in a profusion of colors and designs) ever perched at the ready in a nicely polished marble or wooden holder, they shouted sophistication. He had a lot of them - mostly sitting around at his office. Some had little brass plaques on them, inscribed with something important I am sure. One even had a clock in it, with the two pens poised like bunny ears over it. In his desk drawer, there were more of them. They came in little decorative cases that snapped shut like an alligator, or in an elegant cardboard box presented with all the formality of a State gift. Their little plastic ink cartridges rolled around in the scooped wooden drawer dividers next to brand new pink erasers and paper clips.

He could write neatly and precisely with any of his fountain pens. The golden nibs seemed to glide effortlessly at his beck and call. Personally, I resisted the beautiful temptation of the lovely fountain pens. It didn't take a genius to realize deadly ink flowed like Niagara Falls and your secret little drawing experiment would be a horrifying beacon of obviousness all over the paper, the light blue felt desk blotter, your dress, your hands and always always - your face.

There were too many fat books in his offices; one in Canoga Park (or Thousand Oaks or North Hollywood as his practice relocated) and one in a room at the back of our garage. Shelves of books. Stacks of books. Not story books, I knew this, but stupid laws and rules books. Most of the books were glorified 3 or 5 ring binders with thick leather outsides. The pages were often thin and fragile like scripture pages, but lots of them were coarse and stiff, displaying folds from how they had arrived in the mail before being filed. Most of the titles had alphabet letters and a dizzying variety of number combinations on the binding. The gold leaf in much of that lettering seemed a spectacular waste. Virtually all of them were totally uninteresting. Not one picture, either. I checked lots. The only occasion I felt these types of books were useful was when my Grandma came to visit. She slept in my bed. Her doctor had instructed her to sleep at an angle, feet higher than head. I'm not sure why. Two of the oldest and most ridiculously fattest books on the planet were placed under the foot of her bed. They were as effective as concrete blocks, and grandma didn't seem to mind in the least that her bed was in a perpetual NASA launch position. I kind of admired that she was able to begin snoring so quickly each night after we said prayers.

Numbers were papa's friends. They spoke to him, and he knew their language. He could think

fluent numberese lightning-quick in his head. Everyday problems seemed to often have a remedy quick arithmetic could help solve. There was a mathamatical equation to the meaning of life ~ if you knew where to look. As much as I was an emotional and visual-thinker, his was a naturally analytical brain. He had little tolerance for my violent aversion to what he considered an essential life-skill. He took it as a personal insult that an accountant could have a child who didn't like math. Maybe about 4th grade, a swift belt and a chalk board on an easle in our living room seared the answer to 6 X 8 into my psyche permenantly.

I even worked for him once for about 6 months in the front office. Bi ("Bee") was in Kindergarten, and James was a toddler. I rode the city bus to his Scottsdale office and dinked away on an IBM Selectric ball typewriter the size of a small freighting vessel, answered the phones, ran errands and filed endlessly. New tax laws or revisions of the tax code arrived daily and in multiples via manila envelopes. Dutifully I opened them all and sought the corresponding fat book they belonged to, wrestled with iron maiden-like ring clasps and filed everything away. I did tedious data entry on an old computer that would have crushed a small child if it ever fell off the desk. His partner's son (only just barely back from his mission) was super condescending whenever I approached him for assistance with something I had done wrong on the computer, or if the snail-slow copy machine jammed in an area beyond human intervention. He sighed a lot. (He was my baby brother's age. It would have been sweet to clobber him). I also learned what ASAP meant.

Eventually, very eventually (and not prompted by the afore-mentioned experience)- he finally conceded that I had indeed thwarted his early assessment of my mental accuity. I had somehow managed to skirt even casual interplay with his precious numbers and still excel in other cognitive areas he considered decently important. It was a long time coming, and it stunned me when the cat was finally out of the bag. "...You're smart," he said, more than once. It was declared matter-of-factly, as if he had just spoken the sum of annual Federal deductions to an assistant and then continued on with another topic. He wasn't one to soothe or coax or attempt to offer the 'feel good' thing within the context of an adolescent emergency, or at any time for that matter. And there it was. I think I was about 39.

While I have no absolute proof, I'm pretty sure there are no concerns on the other side about income taxes, last-minute unorganized clients or reams of yellow legal pads. Happy Tax Day, dad.

Sweet Dreams

Deep in the dead of night

rocking the house

from ceiling to floor,

boogie men all take flight -

when Papa begins to snore.

*I have never understood people who complain about their partner snoring. To think - some unappreciated individuals actually submit to uncomfortable nose strips, gagging oral appliances or endure surgery in an attempt to “correct” a God-given gift! For a little kid who was afraid of tree branches scratching up against my bedroom window at night and the proverbial monster under the bed - nothing in the world was more comforting than to hear that familiar, rhythmic rumble from my parent’s bedroom to confirm in a powerful way that papa was home ~ and we were safe.

Somehow the fact that he was obviously sound asleep never occurred to me as a drawback in matters of self-defense.

*from 'Station Wagon Wars' ~ growing up in the '60's by cTanner

SPEED

There’s nothing quite like

the adrenaline rush

of going all-out, bare-foot

behind the ice cream truck.

* Sadly, the beloved ice cream truck seems to be strictly relegated now days only to depressed neighborhoods. That’s too bad. How do they rate, anyway? The only thing going up and down my street is the FedEx truck and the pampered house dog for his twice daily walk. What do those neighborhoods have that we don’t?

Dry, barren yards, driveways hosting old cars up on blocks and enough old furniture piled up in the sagging, paint-peeling carport to furnish an entire room, trash piled up against drooping chain link - and lots of little children. Happy little children who gleefully rush the Lará Brother’s helados van with the same passion we did so long ago on Jellico Ave.

The music blaring from the van is no longer the universal “Little Red Wing” in bell tones from a loftily perched megaphone speaker, but is – well, anything! I’ve heard country, rap, pop, heavy metal rock, musak, campesino and sometimes even just the AM radio on really loud. Inventory has definitely changed. They sell baseball cards, candy, carnival toys, stick-on tattoos and bubble gum just for starters.

The prices are a lot different, too. A nickel used to get me a delicious banana double stick Popsicle or a delectably creamy 50/50 bar. A king’s ransom of a dime was needed for the prized favorite: the multi-flavored Bullet Popsicle. When my oldest daughter was little in the early ’80’s, Bullets were a quarter. Now, almost everything is a dollar.

That’s just wrong.