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Such a Nice Boy

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I Had Developed a Reputation

I Had Developed a Reputation

It’s odd the way the past keeps getting dredged up. I had forgotten about Minichiello’s Pizzeria which stood opposite the Nugget Theater (above) on Main Street in Hanover, New Hampshire. I had managed to get a doctor’s letter absolving me from eating at Dartmouth College’s student dining hall, on the grounds that the food there nauseated me. So I usually ate at the restaurants in Hanover, of which there were about ten at the time—at least including those in my price range.

One of the places I ate was Minichiello’s: They had good pizza and were friendly. The only problem was they thought I was such a nice boy. You must remember that when I was a college senior, I looked as if I were still twelve; and I was subject to bullying by the local high schoolers until they saw I was carrying a college ID. So there I was, munching away at my pizza, when they introduce their daughter to me. She was very cute in a bad girl sort of way, and here her parents were holding me up as an example she should follow—instead of those bad boys who worked at the local garage.

God knows, if it weren’t for the fact that I was seriously ill with a pituitary tumor and, as a result, had not yet physically reached the age of puberty, I would much rather be doing with her those things her parents feared she was doing with the bad boys.

I was a good boy because I had no choice. I would much rather have had fun exploring her anatomy in a dark place rather than holding myself up as some sort of role model, which I was not. (Of course, nothing would have happened in any case because the girl thought I was a dweeb, and she was just being nice to her parents.)

In the end, the Minichiello girl went on to have her life, and I, mine. It was just one of those moments in which I was being nudged by fate into acting a part I did not feel was really mine.

As you all know, I am really bad to the bone.

 

The Talking Llamas

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Not Only Talking, But Shopping As Well

It’s Not Exactly Bloomingdales, Is It?

I was restless last night, probably because my left arm was hurting more than usual. At one point in my dreams, I found myself at UCLA just outside the Ackerman Union, where there is a statue of the Bruin mascot. To my surprise, two llamas accompanied by two girls walked by. Oddly, the llamas were talking like Valley Girls about their shopping experiences at Bloomingdales as if it were an everyday occurrence. Cut to me doing a double take.

Considering that so many of my waking thoughts are occupied with planning my upcoming trip to South America, it is not surprising that llamas, in many ways emblematic of the entire continent, walk through my dreams. They are most welcome, even if they shop at Bloomingdales.

In the Swamp

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I Thought This Was a Desert Here!

I Thought This Was a Desert Here!

For most of the year, Southern California is a desert. In June and July, however, it turns into a swamp. Mexican hurricanes send moisture across the border and make the air sticky and wet.This condition leaves local weather forecasters nonplussed, if only because they do not acknowledge weather that sneaks over the border. Thanks to my friend, Bill Korn, there is a website that shows the Canadian and Mexican effects on our climate.

IThis morning, I felt as if I had slept in a swamp. I just could not get up until around one in the afternoon. Although I am at work now, I still do not feel very good and will probably leave early. Humid weather just never agrees with me.

 

A Club for Kids

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Every Boy’s Sweetheart: Annette Funicello

Every Boy’s Sweetheart: Annette Funicello

On October 3, 1955, I walked over a mile to Warrensville at the corner of Northfield Road and Van Aken to see a movie; but I was more interested in what was going to be on T.V. when I got home. Although I ran at what for me at the age of ten was top speed, I only missed a few minutes of “The Mickey Mouse Club.” I did not make that mistake in days to come: there were kids like me, cartoons, special guests, and various other little daily features.

And there was that ultimate sexpot of the 1950s.No, not Marilyn. The shorter one: Annette Funicello. In darkened living rooms all around the country, little boys were sighing as their hearts went pit-a-pat.

Disney really made it happen for me. That same year, he was going to open a theme park in Anaheim called Disneyland. It was to be an unattainable place of dreams.

Unattainable, at least, until the tail end of 1966, when I came out to Southern California to go to graduate school in film at UCLA. Our old neighbors from Cleveland, the Gurals, took me to a ball game in Anaheim to see the Cleveland Indians lose to the (then) California Angels, after which we went to … DISNEYLAND!

I am not one of those people who are too old and too sophisticated for Disneyland. Granted, the greasy kid stuff at Fantasyland is de trop for me, but I still love New Orleans Square and, nowadays, Toontown. I have yet to visit the Calfornia Adventure theme park next door, but I will eventually.

 

An Improving Broken Shoulder

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How I Looked Before Physical Therapy

How I Looked Before Physical Therapy

Well, it looks as if I no longer qualify for that bellringer’s job. Before showing up at UCLA Rehab last week, I looked like the character above. But thanks to the skill of my physical therapists. aided and abetted by blasting caps and a jackhammer, I am able to move my arms almost as well a monkey in the trees.

This is hardly new to me. In 2002, when I had a left hip replacement, I had my first experience with physical therapy—with such success that my surgeon had to check his records to see which hip he had operated on, so natural was my walk. Then, in 2006, I slipped and fell on the ice during a blizzard in Tierra Del Fuego and cracked my humerus against a high concrete curb. Again, the PTs brought the affected limb back to life. Now, I broke the other shoulder on Saturday, March 14.

I am almost convinced that there is little that physical therapists cannot do. Well, not quite. They weren’t able to do much for the right arm of the guy in the picture below.

A Really Challenging Case for Recovering Full Range of Motion

A Really Challenging Case for Recovering Full Range of Motion

So my hearty thanks to Lynn and Prachi and their colleagues at UCLA Outpatient Rehabilitation and the miracles they accomplish.

 

The Hands of Hegarty

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In Those Days, There were No MRIs or CAT Scans

In Those Days, There were No MRIs or CAT Scans

One of the most galling things about the Internet is that I can’t find any pictures of the people—other than my immediate family, of course—who had the greatest influence on my life. Two Catholic priests who taught me English in the 9th and 10th grades at Chanel High School in Bedford, Ohio, have little or no Internet presence. I am referring to the Rev. Gerard R. Hageman SM and the Rev. Raymond E. Healy SM. (The SM refers to Society of Mary, Marist rather than Marianist.)

Next are the two doctors who saved my life in 1966 when I was in a coma at Fairview General Hospital in Cleveland. If you want some background on my strange medical history, check out this posting I wrote a year ago under the bland title of More Personal History.

My family doctor just happened to be an endocrinologist: Michael J. Eymontt MD. In those days, there were no MRIs or CAT Scans. All that doctors had to detect a brain tumor was the very imperfect X-Ray. Fortunately, Eymontt guessed I had a pituitary tumor.

Nowadays, a pituitary tumor, or chromophobe adenoma, is no big thing. They operate through the nostrils or the roof of the mouth. Back then, they had to disconnect part of my brain tissue and go in from the top. The pituitary gland is located directly in the center of the head. The chances that I would wind up dead or paralyzed or at least blind were overwhelming.

That’s where my neurosurgeon, William M. Hegarty MD came in. On that September morning in 1966, he had a very good day. And I had a very good day. He went in where angels feared to tread and sucked out the tumor (which was benign, like almost all pituitary tumors). When I came to and asked him how big it was, he smiled and said about as big as a grapefruit.

I know that Fathers Hageman and Healy have passed on, as has Dr. Eymontt. But I wonder if Hegarty is still alive. I would like to thank him for letting me have an interesting life. I keep searching on Google….

Caught Between the Warring Twins

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Elek, Margit, and Emil Paris

Emil, Margit, and Elek Paris

I originally posted this on Multiply.Com in January 2011:

It’s been a while since I revisited my past. This time, I’m going back into the period before my birth. The above picture was taken at some point in the 1930s and shows the Paris twins, Elek (Alex) and Emil, and their sister Margit.

Can I tell which one of the men is my father? Probably, it is the one on the right, because my father Elek was always better tanned and more athletic but not so well dressed as Emil. Even later in life, I sometimes had to wait for them to start talking before I recognized them, because they had very distinctive voices.

Elek and Emil could never live far apart from each other. When Emil bought a condominium in Hollywood, Florida, my Dad followed—in the same Carriage Hills condo complex. My father died in October 1985; and Emil died a few months later, of pretty much the same combination of diabetes and heart failure. At my Dad’s funeral, Emil was visibly shaken, as if his world had been taken away from him.

All their lives, the two twins competed through their children. Dad had the two sons, my brother Dan and myself; Uncle Emil had a son and daughter, Emil Jr. and Peggy. At times, the competition got bitter, especially when my cousins faltered in school and in their personal lives. Dan and I, however, always liked our cousins and regretted any bad blood between the brothers. They were just that way.

Margit was a different case: She never married. I don’t even know whether she dated very much or even wanted to marry eventually. Some years after this photo was taken, she opened May’s Bridal Shop in Garfield Heights, Ohio, and lived on the premises spending her time sewing bridal gowns. My job when visiting there was to pick up fallen pins with a magnet. I would also look with admiration at all her old calendars with Currier & Ives illustrations.

I don’t remember when Margit (whom we called Nana) closed the shop and retired to Florence, South Carolina, but I think it was in the early 1970s. She didn’t last very long because, shortly after I returned from Hungary in 1977, I got a call that Margit had died suddenly. The timing was unfortunate, as my parents were still in Hungary visiting. So I notified my brother Dan and the two of us attended the funeral—after sending a telegram to Dad in Hungary. He was very broken-up that he couldn’t make the funeral in time, but was grateful that Dan and I went.

Whatever the competitiveness between the frequently warring twins, I always felt that my Uncle, my cousins, and my Aunt loved us for what we were. Although Margit was closer to her brother Emil than to Elek, that never impacted on the next generation. I did feel, however, that my Dad had never said certain unkind things about my cousins that I wish he hadn’t. Cousin Emil Junior was always good-hearted and frequently protected me from neighborhood bullies when I was a little shrimp of a kid; and Cousin Peggy was, I always thought, incredibly cute.

A life is always strange when one looks at it all of a piece. I cannot help but feel that I have grossly oversimplified the complex web of interrelationships that existed among us. The important thing is that I accepted the few bad things because they were more than made up for with kindness and love. Elek, Emil, and Margit now exist inside of me; and all the conflicts have been resolved.

With the Terries and the Firmies

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Carl Barks Painting of Uncle Scrooge

Carl Barks Painting of Uncle Scrooge

As a kid who loved to read, where do you suppose I found my most interesting stories? The answer is simple: I was a devout reader of Walt Disney’s Uncle Scrooge Comics, created by the redoubtable artist Carl Barks who created the character and illustrated so many great Scrooge and Donald Duck cartoons.

Another big fan of Barks’s work was George Lucas, who frequently borrowed incidents from the Scrooge archive, such as the rolling rock in Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark. And it is said that the musical Mackenna’s Gold was largely based on the “Seven Cities of Gold” episode.

Perhaps my favorite of them all was Barks’s explanation of how earthquakes happen. One day, when all the money from Uncle Scrooge’s huge money vault disappears underground (a plot device he used often), the tycoon travels with Donald and his three nephews, Huey, Dewey, and Louie, to discover the cause.

The Boys Discover What Really Causes Earthquakes

The Boys Discover What Really Causes Earthquakes

The episode entitled “The Land Beneath the Ground” speculates that under the earth are two types of apodal (legless) creatures that, together, cause the shaking and rolling characteristics of temblors. They are called “Terries” and “Firmies” respectively. Fortunately, Huey, Dewey, and Louie find the answers to all their problems in their voluminous Junior Woodchucks Handbook and save the day, and their uncle’s treasure.

I should get a copy of that for my library!

Tarnmoor’s ABCs: UCLA

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Royce Hall on the Campus of the University of California at Los Angeles

Royce Hall on the Campus of the University of California at Los Angeles

All the blog posts in this series are based on Czeslaw Milosz’s book Milosz’s ABC’s. There, in the form of a brief and alphabetically-ordered personal encyclopedia, was the story of the life of a Nobel Prize winning poet, of the people, places, and things that meant the most to him.

My own ABCs consist of places I have loved (Iceland, Patagonia, Quebec, Scotland), things I feared (Earthquakes), writers I have admired (Chesterton, Balzac, Proust, and Borges); locales associated with my past life (Cleveland and Dartmouth College), people who have influenced me (John F. Kennedy), foods I love (Olives and Tea), and things I love to do (Automobiles and Books). This blog entry is my own humble attempt to imitate a writer whom I have read on and off for thirty years without having sated my curiosity. Consequently, over the weeks to come, you will see a number of postings under the heading “Tarnmoor’s ABCs” that will attempt to do for my life what Milosz accomplished for his. To see my other entries under this category, hit the tag below marked “ABCs”. I don’t guarantee that I will use up all 26 letters of the alphabet, but I’ll do my best. The fact that I made it as far as the letter  “U” is a major surprise to me.

I came out to California at the tail end of December 1966 to attend graduate school at UCLA. My original intention was to become a Professor of Film History and Criticism. Well, I didn’t. Instead I ran into dirty politics as personified by one Professor Howard Suber who waged a kind of dirty war on those of his students who loved film. Out of an inborn cussedness, he made it difficult to sign up for classes; and he appointed himself chairman of my thesis committee over my personal choice of the late Bob Epstein. I knew at once that my chances of a Masters degree based on a study of the Westerns of John Ford was a goner.

It was around this time that Governor Ronald Reagan began making deep cuts in the budget of California’s universities. Seeing the handwriting on the wall, I made a sidestep into computer programming at System Development Corporation in Santa Monica, which led, by a commodius vicus of recirculation, into my present profession in accounting.

My quandary was that I loved film, but was not willing to immolate myself for he sake of principle. I kept my hand in film, writing articles and chapters of books even after I was out of the program. I even wrote a humorous article for the UCLA Daily Bruin entitled “Confessions of an Ex-Filmfreak: Or, Slow Death 24 Times a Second.”

My apartment is a scant three miles from the UCLA campus, which I still visit from time to time for various cultural events. It’s always interesting to look back at the decisions that led me to where I am today.

Do I have any regrets? Not really.

 

A Bird with a Broken Wing

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I’m Healing, but Slowly

I’m Healing, but Slowly

Today marks the third week since I fell in the street opposite my house and broke my left shoulder. The fracture is healing nicely, but ever so slowly.

The worst of it is at night when I am in bed. The joint throbs in pain all night, with my arm frequently falling asleep. Last night, I slept all of three hours; and I was unable to nap this afternoon. During the day, I get along all right and do not have to wear my sling. (I wear it on the bus, however, to warn other passengers to steer clear of my shoulder.)

On Thursday, the orthopedic surgeon seemed pleased with my recovery. He hinted that there would be a breakthrough in the next few days. I’m still waiting for it. In the meantime, I’m taking Advil for the pain, which seems no worse than the Hydrocodone I had been taking, and is probably a good deal safer.

This fracture has been far worse than the one I had in 2006 on my right shoulder: That one entailed a slightly cracked humerus. This one is fractured along several planes.

Eventually, this, too, shall pass. In the meantime I wish all of you a Happy Easter!