Beautiful Girls
I remember while traveling, when people found out you were from California they’d ask if you run into any movie stars. You can’t help but run into a few, after all, the movie industry is just a little over a hundred mile north, and that’s where they work.
Most of the few I’ve seen were in Hunter’s Books on Girard in La Jolla, the same store as in my Pulled Over story, same timeframe too. I just asked Brad the other day, that’s Brad, the guy I went downtown with on that dark night in the Pulled Over story. I saw John Wayne and Dr. Salk who invented the first Polio vaccine, and let’s not forget his wife, Francoise Gillot. Picasso’s ex-mistress. But he was there when Joey-Rat-Pack Bishop came in, and Carlos Castaneda later, for a book he had on hold. Don Juan and Don Ginero were nowhere in sight, but that’s just how they were, probably out in the desert flying through hidden psychic dimensions.
But these are just rubbing-shoulders experiences, if not even that. A few words pass back and forth, but these are not intimate-touchy-feely experiences,
Let’s do a negative one first. It wasn’t negative to me, since I plead not guilty with a kid’s excuse. I didn’t know what I was doing, and someone else put me up to it. My parents were the instigators.
When I’m ten my parents take me to Disneyland, which magically appeared one day in the middle of hundreds of orange groves in Wherever it Is, near L.A. Buena Park, Buena Vista, Buena Somewhere, there’s a lot of Buenas in California.
Since it’s the Cold War, they’re selling bomb shelters just off the freeway. The company digs the hole in your back yard and in goes the shelter complete with a down staircase. The only bomb shelter I’d ever seen was on The Twilight Zone.
Disneyland has the biggest parking lot I’ve ever trooped through. We walk down Main Street and end up in Frontier Land, then Adventure Land, make a left turn at the rocket in Tomorrow Land, and end up at the Teacups in Fantasy Land.
After whirling around a few minutes, we decide to get hamburgers and milkshakes. We plop down at one of those circular metal tables and dig in. All this walking has us famished. Afterwards Dad lights up a Marlborough while Mom plays with a nob on her Kodak Brownie Camera.
Mom looks up at me and smiles, and I smile back, but suddenly her expression changes as her brows furrow intensely. But I haven’t done anything wrong, and it’s not me she’s looking at, it’s just past me somewhere. So, I turn to look.
One table has a man eating a slice of pizza with his kid, and the rest are empty. I turn back to see what’s was up with my mom. She’s taking the camera strap off her neck, and in such a rush, her hands are shaking.
She thrusts the Kodak Brownie across the table.
“That’s Jack Lemmon, go over and ask to take his picture,”
When my mom gets this intense, it’s always a serious affair. It doesn’t matter if you don’t know who Jack Lemmon is. It only matters that you obey her orders. If not, you suffer. There will be a price to pay. The Private never questions the Master Sergeant. So, I check the tension of the winding knob, take my handkerchief out of my back pocket, dust the leans off, sling the strap over my shoulder, and head out on assignment.
It was all over in a flash.
“Mister Lemmon, can I take a picture?”
“Sure, kid.”
That’s all he says. He doesn’t even look up. His son, I believe it’s Chris, is taking a bite too.
But when I press the shutter, for some reason, the flash goes off too. And although it’s broad daylight, it draws someone’s else’s attention.
There’s a gaggle of blue-haired Geese, six or seven of them, sitting on the other side of us on the Little Old Ladies Tour. When the flash goes off, they raise their silvery-blue-grey heads in unison and look his direction. Oh! The Sound! The Fury! They pick over him like a sock sale at Macy’s.
They mob him…while we slink off in disgrace.
That’s why I call it the negative one.
***
©Steven Hunley2022
You will notice Dear Readers, that as usual I’ve posted a song along with this. It’s one of my favorite Billy Wilder films. You notice the three main actors in the film? Well, we just told you about one encounter, and that leaves two to go. Am I saying I have a true story about Tony Curtis and Marylin Monroe too? One that’s never been told? That’s exactly what I’m saying. Stay tuned for part two.
https://youtu.be/TRd29cU-u00 Beautful Girls Van Halen