Hollywood or Bust

Hollywood or Bust or

Before we were Baby Boomers…

Adventures of two young women in Hollywood in the 60’s

Do you believe in Magic…?

I remember the day we drove away, backing out of the long driveway in Ellie’s green and white 1957 Ford Fairlane, waving “goodbye” to my mother, who had a big towel wrapped around her freshly washed hair--a few Auburn locks escaping the towel. Ellie was crying and we were tingling with excitement. Not that we weren’t sad too, but we were on our way to our new lives—via Highway 101 from Merced, California to Carmel and Monterey on our way down to L.A., then Hollywood. Of course, we loved Carmel and Monterey, stopping by Hearst Castle and Big Sur and eating too much of both brown and white chocolate from a candy store in Carmel. I’d never had white chocolate before, and I loved it.

Ellie and I met when I had just turned 14 and she 13—we became fast friends, but I found myself feeling more than just friendship, though I wasn’t sure what the tingling in my stomach was all about. Our Dads both worked for Boeing and kept getting transferred, but through our teens we usually ended up in the same town in less than six months. I just knew that our being apart for only six months was a result of my praying to God, every night, that we’d be back together soon.

We started planning our escape after high school, escape from our parents and the small town we lived in. When Ellie came to visit for the summers we fantasized about where we would go and what we would do, while we were working part time at the almond orchard sorting almonds from their green fuzzy hulls. We had fun working for the very nice, grandfatherly farmer and saving money for our new lives. When we’d get home after work, we had to shower off the dirt and dust and green fuzzy residue on our skin, which was fairly obnoxious. I developed an allergy to it and had to wear a mask. The mask was a spongy kind of mask, which made me look like a dog, so we played around with that for entertainment with me howling and barking at our co-workers.

We also went to college to get some business courses under our belts so we could get work, since we knew we’d need to have other jobs while chasing our dreams. I wanted an Oscar, because I was a drama queen teen and was called by my mom, Sarah Bernhardt—a famous French actress from the 20’s.  Ellie really wanted to be a dancer. She loved American Bandstand and a show down in San Diego called Where the Action Is, both of which, were about dancing—and she loved to dance!

We’ve been friends, now, for 55 years—in fact, every November is the anniversary of our friendship. I’ve never had a friendship that long. We are the sisters neither one of us had, growing up. And she was my first love.

There were things that happened as a child, because of sexual abuse, that when I met her and we became fast friends, I felt like she saved my life… I turned over a new leaf because of her friendship.

During those years, living at home, we explored the places our parents moved us to and got to know each other, sharing secrets and developing an intimacy (not sexual, though I wished it so!) in our friendship that came so easily. However, we did share back rubs and writing things with a finger, on each other’s backs! I was always thrilled, when she wrote “I love you” on my back. She wasn’t as outwardly expressive face to face, and even though I was pretty sure she loved me, I was reassured by her declarations on my back!

We lived across the street from each other two or three times when we were growing up, which was wonderful, yet for me, I was also aware of when she got home from a date and had some trouble with jealousy. The rest of the time it was great, even though we also got into trouble more often! We gave each other friendship rings when we were 15 and I still have mine—it meant more to me than I could ever say.

We went to 7^th, through twelfth grades together, off and on, when our Dads were transferred to the same towns. That first summer after 12^th grade, she came for my graduation and we weaseled my mom into letting her stay all summer. She had no siblings so my brothers were also her brothers. Since there was no such thing as gay marriage I had hopes she would marry my oldest brother so I could keep her close, but alas, alack, fate had other ideas.

When her Dad was transferred, for good, to Wichita, Kansas that meant no more transfers to the same towns and I was left broken-hearted in Merced, California. We managed to talk our parents into letting her come visit during the summers.

     

We began feeling it was time to find our own places in the world—the world of man and machinery and the machinations of civilization—totally opposite of our safe world surrounded with parental protection. We were 19 & 20 and had already worked on our own a little, while still in school, but we were hungrier than the small town we lived in could satiate. I’m sure it is in our DNA to break away on our own—part of our evolution, species driven.

We went on adventures while we were working and waiting to break out, like the time we snuck out of the house late at night and drove the ’57 Ford up to Sacramento! It was fun and the capitol building was all lit up—glowing in the dark like a candle. But we had to face my parents when we got home. I don’t remember them being too tough on us, but they were worried. I don’t know how they knew we were gone unless one of my brothers told on us. For us, it was like putting out feelers to check and see if were ready yet, ready to make the big leap. We were!

Another time before we left my mom told us a story about how she’d snuck into a pond with friends late at night and went skinny dipping. Well, we usually went out for a walk in the evening, just to get out of the house and away from my three brothers. It was dark, but we knew our way around. It just so happens there was a neighborhood pool a couple of blocks away with a locked six foot redwood fence around it. We remembered mom’s story and decided to sneak in. We climbed over and managed to go for a very quiet nude swim and just loved it, hardly able to suppress our excitement and giggles! Ellie scraped her thigh on the fence in her effort to get out of the pool area, and the next day her thigh was kind of red and splintery. I have a picture I took of Ellie on the back patio in a lawn chair with my mom leaning over her, plucking out the splinters. One of the things I love about this story is the knowing smile my mom had on her face as we were making up our story, so we wouldn’t get into trouble. I’ll always remember that knowing smile and she never did give us any lectures or scoldings.

So, we planned and schemed and dreamed while my mom helped us figure out a budget and the math of what we needed to live on securely. We were so young and in some ways naïve, but we managed—we were already resilient and if one thing did not work out we found another way that did.  When I think back I realized that our growing up years when our parents moved us around a lot, must have had something to do with our resiliency and ability to snap back.

Our first apartment cost us $150 a month. We were very excited to be living on our own just up the street from Grauman’s Chinese Theatre and so we celebrated with our favorite food of homemade pizza and milk shakes! A blender was one of our most important kitchen aids, and we brought it with us. We didn’t need furniture, because in those days a lot of apartments came furnished, so we opted for that, even though it cost a little more.

We both began working for banks. I started with Wells Fargo, the year Bobby Kennedy was shot. I remember one of my co-workers who’d been there listening to his speech, coming back from lunch absolutely devastated! We all were devastated! My job there did not last long, due to too many male asshole customers and a boss who wanted more than I wanted to give. Ellie worked for another bank and stayed all three years. Next I worked in the filing room for Firemen’s Fund—it was so boring I’d fall asleep filing with my head almost down into the drawer of files, so I ended up quitting and began work at California Blue Shield for about a year. The rules were much stricter than they are now and time off was doled out reluctantly. I did meet some real nice gals there, one of whom, Diana, used to pick me up in her little MG. She lived near me and so we would ride in to work together. However, Diana was not very talkative and seemed depressed half the time despite my efforts to liven her up. I really liked her and found out from my other two friends she had a “room-mate” who was kinda tough (as in butch!).  I wanted to break through her shell, because when she was not so closed up she had a great sense of humor, but it didn’t show up much… I wondered if she ever resolved whatever dilemma she had about her lifestyle-- One more thing that made me unsure about mine.

We’d go out for walks down Hollywood Blvd. looking in all the storefronts and of course laughing about Frederick’s of Hollywood and the scantily clad mannequins in the tacky, cheap looking lingerie of Fashion de Frederick’s attire. At night it was safe to walk down the Boulevard looking at all the night owls cruising or perusing down the street, for what we weren’t sure of--except for the guy with a leather jacket slung over his shoulder, in a see through net shirt, which revealed his physique. Somehow we knew he wasn’t cruising for ‘girls’. He was too good looking and walked with a sway of the hips--even though we did not know names like Gay, and barely even Queer, to describe guys like him, we knew him to be, ‘a guy like him’.  We saw him a lot and naively giggled behind our hands. He was just cruising along the sidewalk, looking good and looking for Mr. Goodbar. 

 

We were just young girls in a big-assed city, yet with a broader perspective from having traveled with our parents to different states to live.

At first, whenever we would go out for a newspaper in the evening, we’d drive down Sunset Blvd. and somehow end up in Burbank! We couldn’t figure out how we managed this, for a long time, but it became our big joke.

We went to modeling classes in preparation for our dreams. I took a drama class along with the modeling and that’s as far as I got. However, it was great for my self-confidence except for make-up class, which did nothing for my confidence and certainly after I was told I looked like a prostitute.  I thought I did too, so in that, it was worthless. Ellie took dancing classes just down the street in the basement of an old school building. I used to watch, sometimes from a bottom window outside—she was very good.

Ellie wanted so much to be a dancer, but I did not realize until later just how much. Eventually, I realized I was not going to attain my goal of an Oscar and sadly she knew it was too difficult to realize her dreams—she tried so hard.

Our second apartment was a real nice one behind Columbia Studios on Beachwood Drive. It was owned and run by an elderly Jewish couple named Hymie and Louise, who were very nice to us, but very strict. It was exciting to be right behind the back lot of Columbia Studios and frequently we’d walk around there looking for “Stars”. One time we actually did see the “Monkees” shooting a segment of their show. We watched them for about 30 minutes and they looked over at us and waved! They were cute—like little boys, and funny. We enjoyed their antics. Some of their music was good partly because Michael Naismith wrote some of their songs. He had accompanied Linda Ronstadt in the Stone Ponies before this.

I wanted the Christmas of ‘67 off from California Blue Shield and didn’t get it, so I took it off anyway, and I got fired. It was very sexist, too, though I wasn’t really that familiar with feminism. We employees (mostly women) had to almost whisper if we talked to one another, because our boss was like a strict old school marm, telling us we couldn’t talk and chew gum, which we did anyway! It was a very strange filing system of thin wooden strips with the insurance information printed on them, which we had to file onto a circling rack with slots for the strips. We were constantly getting splinters and laughing which caused Mrs. Stanger (yes, I remember her name!) to reprimand us, while we all were also sniggering about her discipline and her skinny chicken legs.

Being kind of naive in relation to different cultures, other than Hispanic in New Mexico, I was fortunate to work between two Jewish gals, Iris and Betty who were so much fun to work with and who gave me a more well-rounded perspective, with their sense of humor. We laughed and joked as much as we could, quietly, which made the time and the work go faster and more delightfully! I remember that just before Ellie and I were scheduled to leave for our trip to Hawaii, Betty called me to see if I could lend her $100. She needed an abortion, because of the shame that an illegitimate birth would put on her Jewish family. I felt so bad that I could not lend it to her, as I only had one goal in mind--I wanted so much to go to Hawaii with Ellie. I’d already bought my ticket and there was no way I was giving that up. I always hoped she did all right and still think about it sometimes.

One of the first rock stars we saw on our meanderings along Hollywood Blvd was Lou Christie (“Lightning strikes me again…” can ya hear it?). He was just dressed casually walking into a store along the Boulevard. We knew it was him.  Of course, we squealed with delight to ourselves, trying hard not to be too obvious!  Another day, we also saw Johnny Mathis driving his gold and black ‘60 something Thunderbird, turning a corner off Hollywood Boulevard. We were in Tiger Beat heaven (a popular ‘zine about all the stars and musicians).

Ellie and I went with Diane Di Marco, with whom I also worked at California Blue Shield and her “room-mate”, Joanne Wilson (who now, I believe were lesbians) to the Monterrey Pop Festival in 1967. It was the most incredible stage for all the famous bands of the year, like Jefferson Airplane (before they changed to Starship) with Grace Slick belting out “White Rabbit”. There were Hippies strolling around handing out flowers saying things about peace and love and just being groovy! That was when I found out what I wanted to be when I grew up, a hippie!  And very secretly, a lesbian, although I had no clue about what the life of a lesbian encompassed only having seen a few kind of sad looking “butch” (I did not even know that word, then) women standing on the street corner in Hollywood and wondering if that was what I’d become. They looked depressed and I was afraid. I knew it and even said it to myself at the time. But first I could handle being a Hippie! One coming out at a time.

On the weekends Ellie and I would go out for a drive late at night, if we were bored, and go to Tommy’s Hamburger’s--a very small stand under an overpass in downtown L.A. It was out of this world. It was a very small building and it seems each hamburger was custom made. I remember lines of people waiting to order the juiciest hamburgers known to humankind. They were so juicy that no matter how much they wrapped them, the juices and the trimmings of tomatoes, onions, pickles and dressings dripped all over, if one were careless. Can’t say how healthy they were, but at the time no one cared.

It wasn’t all cherries and cream living together in a huge city--two, inexperienced, young women out on our own for the first time. I had little to no training in budgets and money matters and responsibility was not my best suit, because I was supposed to work a little and then find a husband, and do all the “normal” things a woman was supposed to do. My parents did not want to pay for me to go to Nursing School, because of all the medicines they’d paid for when I was an asthmatic child—according to my alcoholic genius brother--and I had no clue how to do it on my own. So, I worked at jobs for a short time and then got fired for one reason, or another, mostly ‘cuz I didn’t take orders well, nor did I want to sleep with my male boss! Ellie was an only child and her parents taught her well. Her mother was a brilliant perpetual student, musician, artist, sculptor, Masters in Humanities scholar who wanted her daughter to be able to achieve anything she wanted. So she was encouraged to attend college and get a degree. But my dear friend wanted to be a dancer or a model.

In between my floundering in jobs, Ellie and I had a good time going to night clubs, such as the “Whiskey A-Go-Go” on Sunset Boulevard, where we saw the Byrds and the Young Rascals and The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, as well as Tommy Steele performing songs from the musical he was in, “Half a Sixpence.” We went to the Grove down in Malibu, where we saw Gene Clark of the Byrds, on his own. One of our favorite places was the Hollywood Bowl, where we saw The Doors, Donovan, Judy Collins and several others. We never did get into Pandora’s Box on Sunset, and actually weren’t sure it was open at all. We’d always see Hippies hanging around the building, but weren’t gutsy enough to go ask. But we were in, as I mentioned, Tiger Beat heaven and we’d buy the Billboard newspaper weekly, to check out the top twenty bands and musicians and try to see as many as we could.

Before we moved to Hollywood, we both studied a map of L.A. and tried to learn where streets were. We moved there not long after the Watts Riots occurred in 1965, in the summer of ’66, so we put a big circle on the map around the Watts area, just to make sure we stayed away. We threw caution out the window, when we found that a band we liked was playing there. Unfortunately, I do not remember the band’s name, but we realized when we were in line to buy tickets that we were the only white people there, which in and of itself did not bother us.  But because of the riots the year before, we did become worried. When we got up to the ticket booth we told the woman we left our money in the car and high tailed it out of there. Then, as we were leaving we ran out of gas, luckily by a gas station. When we went over to the station to pay for gas, the Black American attendant there yelled at us, “What the hell are you doing here? You need to get the hell out of here, now!!” So he put gas in our car and told us again, to get out fast—not even charging us for the gas! We learned a big lesson, to say the least!

More often than not, with whatever the tune is on the radio, I will know exactly where we were and what we were doing at that time. Driving along Sunset Blvd. in Ellie’s old green and white ‘57 Ford Fairlane, as we headed to Malibu and the beach, or just simply on a drive to get out of the apartment, the radio playing the Beach Boys--“I Wish They All Could Be California Girls” -- or us running in the rain from the music store on Sunset and Vine, a song by The Byrds still playing in our heads and albums under our arms!! I remember how much I wanted to be running hand in hand with Ellie.

We went to the Hollywood Bowl a few times, but two of our favorites were Donovan and the Doors—totally at each end of the music spectrum. Donovan was light, airy, playful, and calming whereas the Doors were more sexual and kinda way out. But Jim Morrison was beautiful in a very Roman, Greek God kinda way. I did not have a crush on him—Ellie did—but I was fascinated by his music and his looks, as though he were a ghost from the Greco-Roman era! The time we saw him he was wearing all black leather, as was his signature, and Ellie almost fainted when she saw that it must’ve been really tight leather cuz there was a noticeable bulge under his pants!  I was laughing so much! Musically, he was amazing, though. The words were simple and no big deal, but it was just fun to listen to the instrumental part of “Light My Fire” go on and on and on. He died not too long later at age 27 as a result of drugs. I’d heard freaky stories about him from a friend who’d gotten an invite from his publicist to meet him at his Malibu home along with a couple of other young women—for what, I had no clue, but my friend got out of there as fast as she could, because the situation was so weird! Some drugs are nothing to mess with!  We loved The Byrds,  so we went to see them several times in our favorite bar, the Whiskey A-Go-Go on Sunset Boulevard. It was a place where all the good bands played. Now it’s really cool to see the transitions the long lasting bands have made and where the major musicians are now.

In 1967, we decided to go to Hawaii. So, we saved up our money for the trip and made ourselves some colorful muumuus to wear which was what we learned the tourists wore. We were way too cute! Personally, I think it was a ruse to make sure everyone knew who the tourists were so they could avoid them, or be prepared to deal with them! Anyway, we were in a 9-day tour group, so we had all our plans made for us, which was a good idea, because at 21 & 22, we had no clue where to go or how to find anything. We landed in Hilo and got on a smaller prop plane to fly over the mountains to Kona. Flying over the mountains we also flew over Mt. Kilauea volcano and peered down onto this huge area of smoke and red-hot lava—it was gorgeous! The trip over was rather bumpy, but we were so high on our adventure in paradise that it didn’t matter. Once we were ensconced in our room ahhhhing and oooohing over all we’d seen and smelled since we landed, we immediately ordered Mai Tais from room service. The air smelled overwhelmingly like flowers everywhere! The leis we received were garlands full of orchids, and plumeria flowers.

We were thrilled, to say the least, and the first entertainment we wanted to see there was none other than Hawaii’s own Elvis, aka Don Ho. After all the incredible musicians we’d seen so far, we wanted to see Don Ho? Or maybe an older relative wanted us to see him for them? Well, either way, he was synonymous with Hawaii, and we wanted to have the whole experience, so why not! We had a blast.

We got hooked on a coconut, pineapple and rum drink called Chi- Chi’s and that’s all we drank when we went out. It was so yummy!

In our tour group were a couple of Registered Nurses, Pat & Barb, who were good friends. I wanted so much to have someone to talk to about my undying love for Ellie that I almost spilled the beans to them, because they seemed like they were very close and might be ”like me”—risking a lot or nothing, I didn’t care, but sensibly ended up not saying anything. They were great gals and we had a lot of fun together. They counseled me on how to get into nursing school in L.A.  And when I got back to the Mainland I took an entrance exam, but didn’t pass—they were accepting only the highest fifty scores. I was disappointed, but things went in a different direction.

Anyway, in Hawaii we went on a day trip in an old school bus to Rainbow Falls and quite honestly it was hard to tell the colors of the falls from all the muu-muus! But seriously, it was a beautiful waterfall, as the sunlight hit it just right showing up the colors.

Our tour guide was a Hawaiian guy who did magic tricks. He was very good and encouraged us to visit the Magic Castle in the Hollywood Hills to see more wonderful magic tricks. The ones he did were amazing and when we got back home we tried to get in, but he forgot to tell us we had to be a member.

Our Hawaii trip was wonderful, seeing the Black Sands Beach and spending a whole day on our own on the beach, getting very sunburned—the kind that burns all the time, like needles poking the skin. We palled around with Pat and Barb (the nurses) and Mr. & Mrs. Frost, an older couple (you know 50’s or 60’s!) who were very nice. I sent my mother a purple orchid lei, which she was soo thrilled about that she later painted it on a piece of wood and sent the painting to me. I thought it was real! I still have it.

For nine days we had a great time and when it came time to leave we tried to extend it another couple of days--we were just having too much fun! We got the tickets changed but we had nowhere to stay. So, we conspired with Pat and Barb to stay with them, since they had a longer tour. Of course, we had to be real careful and sneak in and out of the room, plus we had to sleep on the floor.  “But, ain’t no big ting, brudda!” (Hawaiian lingo) and we had so much fun. We didn’t get caught--although a couple of hotel employees were a bit suspicious, but we were young and carefree—or immature and careless, not sure which -- and having the time of our lives!

We did a lot of shopping, too, although not a lot of buying. I remember Pink Coral was a real big deal there and we both fell in love with it. Ellie tried on a ring--it was so beautiful on her finger, I wanted to buy it for her, but I could not. Once in a blue moon I’ll see Pink coral, now, and I’ll get the same feelings I had then…how much I cared for her, how much fun we had.

It wasn’t all pizza and milkshakes, because in those days dating men was a scary thing. We tried a couple of times, but it was always a disaster. Suffice it to say, I did not give a hoot about the men, but thought it my only choice! So, when I did go out on dates, they ended up being a fight for my virginity. I won. After a particularly harrowing date once I met a nice older Black man on the bus, who could tell I was traumatized from a bad date and who began talking real nice to me in a protective/fatherly way. When I got off the bus he asked if it was l all right with me for him  to follow me for a ways to make sure I did not get accosted on my way home. I gave up dating, after a couple of these disastrous dates. But I know I did have some protective energies around me. Ellie was always there for me, too, when I got home. She did not date much, which was fine with me, because I would’ve been overprotective of her. Ellie had a crazy and disturbing experience when we moved into our first apartment and was no longer interested in the dating scene.

We decided to move in with a gal Ellie worked with named Sherrie, so we could save money for travel. One Sunday we decided to go to Griffith Park and walk up into the hills to bury our version of a time capsule. In it were notes describing what we thought our futures would be. The idea was of coming back one day and uncovering it to see if they came true!  We had just regular tennis shoes on and pedal pushers, but managed to make it to the top. We could see the San Fernando Valley on one side and the L.A. valley on the other. The view was quite spectacular, and for three flatlanders such as ourselves we did pretty well. Needless to say, we never went back. The future I wrote down was what I was conditioned to believe I wanted, i.e. marriage and kids. What I secretly wanted was to live happily ever after with Ellie.  What happened instead was Ellie decided she wanted to marry the guy she’d met in Kansas on a trip home—I was so confused about what I wanted at this time in my life that I was numb. By the spring of 1969, Ellie left, tragically, not having realized her dreams and secretly not wanting to leave me, as she told me years later. Sherrie, who had been our roommate and had lived with me a few months after Ellie left, took off to travel in Europe and left me alone with the bicycle I’d bought when I worked in Beverly Hills. I rode to Griffith Park as much as possible. Things changed after Charles Manson decided to freak out and commit the Sharon Tate murders, though. I was scared living in my little Murphy bed apartment listening to soothing music each night by the open window. I quickly moved to the bed and closed the windows and did not ride my bike as much.

There was a lot of confusion between Ellie and me in those last months before she left. She told me about how she almost had a nervous breakdown—leaving behind her dreams and me. She told me later that as she was driving out of L.A. toward “middle nothing” and thinking about all that we’d done and not been able to achieve with all our high hopes, our dreams and fun times, not to mention our friendship, it was almost more than she could take and she had to stop along the highway and spend the night in a motel.

After I found out Ellie wanted to marry the guy back home, my broken heart had to make a defensive move and I began dating a guy who had lived in our apartment building behind Columbia Studios.  He was nice and a good Catholic boy from Missoula, Montana—so how could I go wrong? I was hurting so much, I could not see straight (literally!) and ended up marrying him, then divorcing him four months later. Nothing was wrong with him, I just knew what I wanted finally and even confessed to him about Ellie. He did not use it in the divorce, thank goodness, and by that time I was in Seattle with my folks. Of course Ellie and I talked on the phone and not long after I found my own apartment in West Seattle, she sent me a letter saying she wanted me to be her matron of honor. I wanted to go so badly, just to see her and maybe convince her otherwise, but I was not making enough money, so I could not go. Heartbreak #3!

We had so much fun in those three years in L.A. and saw so many wonderful musicians and bands and stars—it was an experience that cannot be equaled, as well as a friendship only equaled by my partner of 25 years.

One experience that Ellie and I did not share was that of Barbra Streisand. I adored her and even cut a night class to go see her in the Premiere at Pantages Theater in “Funny Girl”. I got to see up close and personal beautiful Barbra Streisand and handsome Omar Shariff walk into the theater and then later went to see her in the movie. I was in love all over again, because for some reason Barbra reminded me of Ellie. And funny thing was, Ellie did not care that much about her. However, Barbra gave me an outlet for my feelings towards Ellie and I could talk about her as a surrogate without anyone knowing... I loved her voice and all her songs and still do to this day. I watched “Funny Girl” just recently, which brought up so many emotions of Ellie and all of our experiences together.

In the ensuing years Ellie and I always kept in touch and as I came out, without coming out to her, I know she knew. I could always call, from a phone booth, like one rainy night in a small town across Puget Sound, and cry on her shoulder about losing a lover, as well as laugh about silly things in the past and in the present. We’d get together whenever we could. We would always miss each other, a lot, but when we got together, it was always like we’d never been apart—still true to this day.

She came to visit me, with her husband, when I lived in West Seattle and so I got a male friend of mine to be our tour guide. Then we took Ellie and her husband to Vancouver and Victoria, as well as to see the Hoh Rain Forest on the Olympic Peninsula. It was a lot of fun and Wayne was a nice fellow to bring along, so I could pretend everything was “normal”. The topper of that trip was when she began complaining of being nauseous a lot. She had trouble with endometriosis and had not been able to conceive, so I promptly got her an appointment with my Gyn and voila! It turned out she was pregnant! I felt so happy for her and so happy it was on my watch. I was secretly proud, as if it were mine.

The music and the times were life changing for us, as well as others of our generation, and I cannot forget our wonderful friendship and all the adventures we went on, just in our friendship, not to mention our times in Hollywood. I can be driving down the road or sitting in a restaurant or even walking the aisles of our local grocery store and a song will come on over the intercom--I am right back there in Hollywood driving down Sunset Boulevard or out to Burbank to get a newspaper or at the Whiskey A-Go-Go and even the Hollywood Bowl. Put on a song by Crosby, Stills and Nash, The Byrds, Joni Mitchell, Judy Collins, Joan Baez, The Doors, The Buffalo Springfield, Donovan or Bob Dylan, Lovin’ Spoonful and with a smile on my face and an “Ahhhhhhhh” in my heart, I know--that was our music, our generation and our friendship--Ellie and I were in the midst of it!

We were also aware of what was going on in Viet Nam and politics, but did not feel we could do much, so we supported all those in the “fight” and acknowledged those events, and the music that went along with it, but politics was not on our list of things to be involved in. We were pretty unconscious at that particular time--just girls having a good time. I became more enlightened after moving to Seattle. We talk on the phone now, and tell each other how much we miss each other, and wish we lived on the same block, but money is scarce and her health fragile. She has lived in Kansas all these years and been through her own transitions, but we talk as much as we can.

(c) 2018 Cyndi Rucryst