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Ice Station Atlanta

If you would, please, bear with an old man, for I have a digressive tale to tell, full of reminiscences (I can’t help myself – the world was so small back then). I’m going to take you back, back like a rocking chair (as we used to say); back several decades to 2014 (yes, I am that old).  There was one day in particular that I suspected I’d never forget, and that suspicion has certainly held up, even until now.  I’m referring to Tuesday, January 28th, the day a big ice storm hit Atlanta (when my wife and I still lived there).  It made national news for days on end.

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Rock City Arcade

By late 1981 my family and I were living on Hollywood Boulevard in post-glamorous Hollywood, California. Sometimes, just living amidst the hookers and general squalor of the Hollywood Premiere Motel got to be a bit much.  Luckily I had a distracting refuge just a few blocks away.  In those days the Rock City Arcade existed on the ground floor of the Hollywood-Western Building at, you guessed it, Western Avenue and Hollywood Boulevard, 5 or 6 blocks from the end of the Walk of Fame.

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Hey New York, Quit Changing So Fast!

I haven’t lived in New York since 1999.  But I’m still a New Yorker, there’s no doubt about that!  It’s like being a Marine, once one; always one.  But I’ll admit something here, I’ve lost track.  And for that I’m very concerned.  I haven’t been there for years now and it’s changed so much, and well….. what will I do?!

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Concrete U

All through 1984 and early ’85, I targeted a date on my calendar; it was my graduation from Miami Beach High.  Diligence and aptitude in High School had prepared me for, what?  I wasn’t sure.  There wasn’t anything that really inspired me, so I let the opinions of some that I respected propel me along on my lazy tide.  I just needed more time to think it over, I wished there was a place where I could do this and yet still be counted as a college student.

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Fencing Kitties

Jeannine Wooten was a dreamer.  Like many dreamers, she was given to the get-rich-quick scheme.  This may imply to you a generalized lack of energy or effort on her part, but to that I must reply, oh, contraire!

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Old Mickey

 

The following is from a 7th Grade homework assignment, dated April 15th, 1980 (spelling has been corrected and the narrative tightened up a tad)

     My little sister Mary and I were just walking up Wilcox Avenue one day last week and saw a sign across the street from the Post Office:  “Grand Opening – Mickey Rooney’s Star-B-Q – Come meet Mickey Rooney – Sunday April 13th.”  This was pretty exciting, we may live in Hollywood, but except for that time my sister Laura actually ran into Elliott Gould on Hollywood and Highland, we never see the Stars come down here from the Hills, not since the olden days anyway, and I wasn’t even alive then!  It’s 1980 now and things have really changed.  Hollywood has gotten a little dirty (OK, pretty scummy, my mom says); and except for Johnny Grant’s Hollywood Boulevard Star dedications, Stars pretty much stay away from here.

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Alternate History

For most kids, the transition from Junior High to High School is not that different.  Sure, there’s a little fear of the unknown and a little relocation involved, but going from 9th to 10th Grade shouldn’t be that big of a deal.  It’s just a combination of old and new friends in largely familiar surroundings.

My case was a little different.  Due to my mom’s Sudden Transcontinental Relocation “Plan,” or STRi”P,” I got to experience the transition from the Golden State to the Sunshine State, or, if you will, 2,741 miles of ‘vive le difference.’  No friends, no familiar surroundings (not even any hills or mountains); it was an unwitting and unwanted fresh start for me.

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Leaving New York

I lived in New York for 12 years.  In that time I went through a lot of stuff, I guess like anybody would over a 12 year span.  But I finally decided I wanted something better (and I say that full in the knowledge that I consider New York to be the best city in the world).  The City was a place of endless wonder, but I was lacking something.  I wasn’t living up to the potential of the Energetic Metropolis.  I needed to find for myself a different definition of potential.

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When It Began

The Replacements got together and played a gig last night (Aug. 24, 2013) in Toronto.  It was the first time they’d performed together since July of 1991, and for me, though I was not there, it was as if the Beatles got back together.  I never thought it’d happen.  I’m not the only one who thought that, rabid ‘Mats fans all over thought the day would never come.  Why do we people who love the Replacements give such a shit?

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A Real Hollywood Premiere

Our slow ejection from the State of California was gradual at first, predicated on a string of unlucky events.  My mom’s boss had embezzled from the company she worked for and so everyone there lost their jobs.  Due to subsequent mounting bills, my family was kicked out of the Lido (my own personal sanctuary) in December of 1981.  I’d moved around a lot as a kid, but the two and a half years I spent at the Lido had made me feel safe and secure.  If I was a fool for feeling that way, then this was my fool’s paradise.

Though I supposed that not only Victor Kilian; but also the several residents assaulted inside and outside of the fortress walls; and even the unnamed guy who kept starting fires in the Lido lobby would not have agreed with me.

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