He was still out there.
I instinctively began to put my socks back on.
“We have a problem,” I said.
“Whaddya mean?” Larry said, still dreaming of Malibu.
“The guy with his camera is still out there,” I said.
Bobby Richards was out there, navigating the snow and darkness in his sneakers and T-shirt. Unlike us, he had not set up camp. It was getting cold, the wind picking up, and it looked like a whiteout was descending on us. It was.
“If he can’t make it down, he’ll freeze,” Larry said.
Having little choice, we packed up everything quickly and set out back into the darkness. The storm’s intensity continued to pick up, the wind howling and the snow thickening. Flashlights in hand, we headed down cautiously. After a few moments I heard Larry cursing behind me.
“Everything okay?” I hollered.
“No.”
“What?”
“I lost my fucking glasses,” he said. “The wind just blew them away.” We began feeling around the trail in the dark for the frames of his glasses, careful not to crush the lenses with our boots. But the recovery of Larry’s glasses was a hopeless cause, and eventually we turned our attention to the recovery of Mr. Richards. We moved farther down the trail. Larry began to stumble and fall. He was a powerful, strong man, but without his thick glasses he was helpless. He was descending a precipitous trail not only in a snowstorm but also with blurred vision. Given our increasingly imperiled situation, I thought of those statistics and stories of Whitney hikers who simply fell off the mountain. Would Larry become one of them? Would I follow? And where the hell was Bobby Richards and his damn camera?
Knowing we could easily get three feet of snow up there, we tried to move fast. To steady himself, Larry put his hand on my shoulder. Together, we eased down the trail, one step at a time, as the snow picked up. Without crampons we were constantly slipping. Larry might as well have been blind, and now I could barely see; one flashlight had been lost and the other was rapidly losing power. We were sliding on the rocks and feeling around in the darkness, knowing the sheer drop-offs were one false move away. The mountain felt alive.
“We gotta get off this mountain,” I said to Larry as he held on to my shoulder, careful not to slip on the snowy trail.
“What about the hiker?”
“Maybe we’ll stumble on the guy,” I said, testing the snowy trail with my feet and inching us down, struggling forward into the dark oblivion. Then we heard a noise. A moan.
Bobby Richards, the foolish day-tripper, was huddled between a pair of rocks, moaning into the wind. I could tell he was dehydrated and had to be damn near frozen. We got him to his feet, rubbing his arms and smacking his legs to get the blood flowing. I rifled through my pack and found a pair of socks, which I placed on his hands as makeshift mittens. I had a poncho, and we placed that on him, shielding him slightly from the wind and the snow.
He was in bad shape. We had to get him down immediately, and ourselves with him. Together, we formed a chain. We draped Bobby’s arms over my neck so I could hold his socked hands and block some of the wind that was pummeling us all. Larry was behind Bobby to keep him moving and held on to the poncho to steady himself without his glasses.
We didn’t get far. We were all exhausted, and it was hard to gain our footing. Leading, I struggled to stay on the trail. The slipping and sliding increased, and I found myself taking a few steps off the trail to find better footing, not knowing where my steps would lead us. Then the remaining flashlight went out.
“We’ll go off this fucking mountain if we keep going,” I yelled back into the wind.
New plan: Instead of descending through the storm, we’d try to make camp. Trying to find my footing, I stumbled into a shallow crevice big enough to hold the three of us. We’d try to spend the night on the mountain and wait for the light of dawn and hopefully sun and warmth to rescue us. We had a pair of down sleeping bags. Bobby Richards was delirious. We laid him down on the ground, put him inside my mummy bag, and poured some of the last drops of our water into his mouth. He either fell asleep or lapsed into a coma instantly. Worried about him, I wrapped him in the light cord from our tube tent, tying the other end around my arm. Larry was a big guy, so he and I could fit only halfway into the other mummy bag, but we had on our down jackets, and if they didn’t get wet they would keep us warm.
We just huddled there together, praying for the snow to stop and the sun to come up in the morning. But time never moves slower than when the elements—pain, cold, hunger—strike. The warm sands of Malibu seemed millions of miles away. I thought about the strange delivery of Bobby Richards and my impulsive decision to go looking for a stranger in the snowstorm. Was it a mistake? Of course it wasn’t, as Mr. Richards was now snoring fitfully. All through the interminable night Larry and I were crammed together in that bag. It was the first time I’d had a powerful marine holding me in his arms. Thankfully, it would also be the last.
• • •
The snow did stop and the sun did come out. What had been our nightmare the night before was now beautiful: a new day. No wind, no cold. Even my toe was slightly better. In the light, we could see where we had strayed. We were only ten feet from the trail.
Bobby Richards woke up in a blur, bewildered. Who were we? What had happened? Where was he? He didn’t remember a thing. We packed everything up and hiked out. At Whitney Portal, a ranger and his pack animal were waiting for us, along with Bobby Richard’s wife and his stepson. He’d never signed up for the climb, but we had, so when we didn’t make it down the previous night they began assembling a search team. For us, not him.
The ranger thanked us for saving the elderly man’s life. So did Bobby Richard’s wife and his stepson. He would have died on the mountain, surely, if we hadn’t rescued him. He lost his old Speed Graphic but kept his life.
My good friend Bobby Richards never said a thing. He just disappeared with his family, never volunteering a thank-you. He never sent a note. I was angry at first. Larry and I had risked our own lives to save this thankless man. But in time, I thought better. I had gone up Mount Whitney to challenge myself physically. Instead, I’d faced a challenge of far greater consequence, one that had little to do with reaching the summit and everything to do with what was a really important tome.
My father would have done the same thing. Instead of looking after ourselves, we risked life and limb to help a stranger. I knew how proud it would make him feel, and I couldn’t wait to get to a phone and tell him the story. He would no doubt curse the foolish hiker, who, like so many who trek into nature unprepared, not only put himself at risk but also jeopardized the lives of those who attempted to save them.
On the drive back to LA, I remembered those days my father and I spent on my weekend visits in his apartment, wrestling on the floor of his living room. He’d tackle me and tickle me and pin me down, forcing me to maneuver my way out of his grip. “A Goldsmith never gives up,” he’d say, and he was right: no matter how strong he was, I managed to get out from his clutches. When I was pinned, he pressured me to figure my way out. It was all a lesson about perseverance. It was a lesson I utilized on Whitney. I was a Goldsmith. And I didn’t give up.
If You Can’t Move On, at Least You Can Move
After returning from the mountain, I was determined to get my own place. Living on my friend Koenig’s couch for the past month had become a health hazard that rivaled Whitney. I needed my own space, one I didn’t share with a roommate or bedbugs. But with slim job prospects, I couldn’t afford much. I couldn’t even afford to repair my own car.
“Jono, I may have something of interest to you.”
Evelyn Amie wasn’t a booking agent. She was a friend of my stepfather’s (with whom I had come to terms) who had lived in Los Angeles and owned some rental properties throughout the city and the Valley. She knew I didn’t have a place
to live, was short on cash, and was overstaying my welcome over at Chez Koenig. Evelyn also had a problem with a renter. I seemed like the solution. Win-win.
“I have to evict a tenant from this house I have in the Valley,” she said. “Would you like to live there and just look after the property?”
“How much?”
“Free.”
“What’s the catch?”
“He’s threatened to come back and burn the house down,” she said. “I don’t think it’s anything I really have to worry about, but still . . .”
Well, no. It wasn’t something that Evelyn had to worry about. It was something that I would have to worry about. Still, it was an incredible deal, in theory. My own pad! No rent! Small fire hazard.
“Absolutely,” I told her, accepting the offer without even seeing the place. “I always loved the country.”
Then I went to check out the place. The property was on Valleyheart Drive, in North Hollywood, out near Coldwater Canyon. Up the path, I noticed a barn in the back with stalls—for horses, no doubt. The home itself was small, a caretaker’s house. The place must have been a farm, I thought. I circled around the back. And that’s where I found them.
Five cement troughs. Pools, really. Like pools on a fish farm, but not for fish. For frogs, I learned. I’d been given the keys to an abandoned frog farm. I opened the front door of what years ago must have been the caretaker’s house, walked into the living room, and got a sense of Evelyn’s pyromaniac tenant’s design style. The walls of the home had been plastered with cutouts from Black Silk Stockings, a nudie magazine. Everywhere I looked, a collage of scraps adhered to the wall: a flash of breast, skin, teased hair, plastic high heels, cleavage.
Okay. Who was this guy? How hostile was he? What had he been doing here? The scatterings of flesh from the magazine pages hung on the walls were reminiscent of keepsakes of sociopathic characters in horror films, serial killers, true sadists. How serious was he? What was he after? Would he really come back?
The country didn’t look so good anymore. I searched the caretaker’s house for weapons, for booby traps, any signs of madness. I inspected the closets, the cabinets, expecting to find a prisoner here on the frog farm, perhaps with handcuffs or hog ties or other instruments of depravity. I’d stepped into the former den, surely, of a mad and dangerous man. Then I noticed the window. From the outside of the home, I had seen a window on the second floor. It was small, with wooden panes. On the inside, the window did not exist. On the wall, there was nothing but cold stucco. A fake window?
On second thought, living on my own was great, but it was time to get a roommate.
I called Nick Colasanto, another actor friend, who would later go on to play Coach on the show Cheers. At the time, Colasanto had been complaining about how broke he was, just like the rest of us. He was always behind on his rent.
“Nick, I found a place in the country for us to live,” I said.
“What’s it like, kid?”
“Oh, it’s beautiful. It’s an old frog farm. You’ll love it.”
“An old frog farm? What the fuck does that mean?”
“I don’t know. There are little cement ponds, but they’re empty. We can’t swim in them, but come summer, we can wade around. And it’s got two bedrooms.”
“What’s the rent?”
“There is no rent.”
“I’ll be right over with my stuff,” he said, and half an hour later I watched Colasanto’s Buick Century pull up, plowing through the weeds that I was pretty sure covered what was once the driveway.
“Lovely,” he said, getting out of the car and taking a long, sweeping look around. Together, we loaded all his worldly possessions—two whole boxes’ worth—into the caretaker’s house. It was late in the day and soon the late afternoon sky had faded. The sun dropped over the Pacific, the chill and darkness of night cooled the Valley, and the stucco caretaker’s house was now ice-cold. Where was the heater? We looked for a fireplace, but the rooms were all bare. We looked for a furnace. There was none. The frog farm was no more insulated than the broken-down shed I had built for Rita.
I guess that’s the cost of free.
Without chairs, a couch, a source of heat, a television, a radio, or any source of entertainment, Nick and I had nothing to do and no way to keep warm. We stripped the old blinds from the windows and wrapped the ratty drapes around ourselves. The living room was freezing. We could see each other’s breath in front of us as if we were smoking cigars. There was only one chair, which we took turns using. Outside, we heard the howl of coyotes, shrieking and cackling like small children. They sounded like they had us surrounded.
Colasanto started muttering about a host of Italian superstitions. He introduced strange words like fatuta, a spell, or the malocchio, the Italian evil eye, and the various remedies to protect himself from bad omens, like keeping hats off of beds to prevent imminent death. When a coyote bayed at particularly close range, Colasanto sat up and made an announcement.
“We need a fucking watchdog.”
The next day, we went to the pound looking for the largest and most imposing dog they had. We took home a Weimaraner and named him Hey Boy, after Richard Boone’s Chinese aide on Have Gun—Will Travel. He was big. He was imposing. And he was afraid of his own shadow. He was no help, but he was sweet and as in need of a home as we were.
Huddled in the thin, ratty window dressings, I felt like a failure. My career had regressed from promising actor to garbage truck driver. I was broke, hungry as always, and now cold and at risk of being incinerated in my sleep. But misery loves company, and Nick and I were in the same boat. I knew he was a wonderful guy, and I am thankful that some years later, when he got his break on Cheers, the American public got to know what a wonderful guy he was too.
He was famous for his pasta. At least that’s what he told me. I don’t know why. It was okay. But the work provided its warmth, so at least I could leave the curtains behind. I was his sous chef, slicing garlic, peeling tomatoes. As he boiled the water, we’d reminisce about our latest disaster. Since we couldn’t get any acting gigs, we posed as house painters during the day. We had no technique whatsoever. Everything ran or curdled. We lost every job we ever had, usually by noon. Obviously, we had no references.
We’d take his car, a wagon that would usually overheat by the time we reached the top of Mulholland Drive, the unofficial dividing line between Hollywood and the Valley. We stashed jugs of water in the sagebrush to feed the radiator. More than once, we coasted down Laurel Canyon into Hollywood with steam spewing from under the hood.
I was the gopher, running to give supplies to the clueless lead painter.
“Nick, you don’t know what you’re doing,” I implored him as he mixed enamel and acrylic together. “You can’t do that.”
“Keep your voice down,” he’d whisper. “They don’t know.”
After a while, he’d step back dramatically and look upon his work as though it were an artistic masterpiece. The clients never seemed to understand his vision, to put it mildly.
“You don’t recognize talent!” Nick would shout. Like the rest of our lives: another failed audition.
“C’mon, kid, let’s get out of here,” he’d say to me. “They obviously don’t recognize genius when they see it.”
By the time we were making our nightly pasta, we couldn’t stop laughing, imagining the paint still dripping, turning someone’s bushes blue.
We thought that frog farm was haunted. Sometimes, I heard strange voices in the night. Had the tenant finally come back to start the fire and burn the whole thing down? Then I’d be not only a failure but a dead failure. But as I’d pad through the creaking house, I’d realize it was Nick mumbling to himself.
“Those people just don’t know how to treat artists,” he’d mutter, and I’d laugh. Maybe the pasta wasn’t so bad after all. In those moments, we we
re all right.
• • •
Nick liked the ladies as much as I did. One day, I came home to find Nick sitting on our only chair. In the front yard. In his boxer shorts. He was trying to get a suntan for a big date he had lined up for that night. He was agitated.
“You got any dough?” he asked.
I saved all my change in a coffee can. I counted it out and was glad to offer my buddy everything I had: twelve bucks. It was certainly enough for him to arm himself with his secret weapon: a bottle of Christian Brothers Brandy.
“Tell me about her, Nicky!”
His excitement was palpable and it was rubbing off on me. It had been a little while for Nicky and I was happy for him.
“Well, she’s no kid, maybe midforties. But she’s a knockout. She’s married, but her husband’s out of town on a big case, like, a murder case or something.”
A case? Wait a second . . .
“Jesus, Nicky! A cop? Are you sure about this?”
“Of course I’m sure. I’m not passing up an opportunity like this. What do you think, I’m nuts?”
I was starting to.
“Nicky,” I said slowly and emphatically. “Cops. Carry. Guns.”
“Leave me alone,” he said, waving me away and getting back to his rays. “He’s in Ohio on a case.”
He shaved, drenched himself in some fine Italian aftershave, and was off, arriving at his lady lover’s with flowers and Christian Brothers Brandy in hand. All was going well, except for her fox terrier. It was barking, nipping, driving them crazy, and spoiling the mood.
“Honey,” said Nicky, “I can’t perform like this.”
She put the terrier in the bathroom, where Nick’s clothes were neatly hung. They danced, feeling no pain. Nicky was in ecstasy. She pulled out a mat from the closet and laid it on the floor, saying she didn’t want to denigrate her husband by using the bed. That’s very admirable, Nicky thought.
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