Growing up on the ranch not only sparked my love for animals but also was where I first became attracted to interesting cars. The first thing a man needs on a ranch, even if it is only an acre or two, is a good truck or jeep. One day my father came home behind the wheel of a World War II military Jeep. It had the big white star on the hood and was painted standard army green. He also managed to pick up a trailer to hook to the back of the jeep and, within a matter of days, the transformation began. My father recruited my older siblings Dick and Susan (I was still young enough to escape the work detail) to help him paint the Jeep and trailer bright yellow. Yellow! I couldn’t believe it. The really cool army Jeep suddenly looked like a carnival attraction. All we lacked was a couple dozen clowns to come piling out of the trailer. Regardless of its looks, the Jeep proved to be a good asset for working around the ranch. And it was a lot of fun to ride in, too—especially on our trips to the beach. It never occurred to us that riding in an open cockpit without seatbelts might be a little dangerous.
My father’s real love was exotic English cars, the ones first imported after World War II. One of his first roadsters was a black Austin sedan. He didn’t keep the car but a month or two at best. Shortly thereafter he showed up with a Hillman Minx, certainly appropriately named but a mechanical nightmare. He quickly sold and replaced it with an even more exciting automobile, a 1950 light green Cadillac convertible, which was given to him to settle a long overdue gambling debt. I think the old man felt a bit out of place cruising the rural streets of Rancho Santa Fe in such a flamboyant set of wheels, so that car was quickly disposed of and replaced once again with an even better and classier model: a 1950 MG convertible. It was truly a work of art: black with red leather seats, spoke wheels, and just plain beautiful. As memory serves, it was one of a very few MGs imported into the US at that time. My father loved that car, and I was given the honored title of wash and wax attendant, which included caring for the exterior and sweeping and saddle-soaping the interior. For my efforts, I earned a full three dollars and the possibility of an extra tip for a job well done. I usually received it, too, my father being the generous man that he was.
Other than the yellow Jeep, my dad would show up with strange vehicles on a regular basis: Morris Minors, Sunbeams, Triumphs, Nash Ramblers, and another Hillman car thrown in for good measure. They were great looking rides and certainly fit my dad’s character, but every hour on the road equaled an hour of shop time. The problems would involve the Lucas-designed electrical systems or a water pump or a carburetor or any manner of odd breakdown. But my father was persistent and always felt the next acquisition would be the best and last.
Fortunately, my mother held sway on her choice of cars, which was always a big, solid, dependable American station wagon. Those wagons remained our saving grace for getting around the county. I learned to drive stick shift in our 1953 Ford station wagon, and I had many adventures in that car when my folks were out on the town. Mind you, it was hard sitting on a phone book and trying to peek over the windshield, but I escaped many death-defying stunts when I “borrowed” that station wagon, always evading Sheriff Pelco’s patrol car. I did manage to get the rear axle stuck on the edge of a cliff one night. My friends and I were terrified we would either go over the cliff or never get it loose to get home. Ultimately, we made it home that night and proceeded to lay low for a long time. But I would have a thing for interesting cars for many decades to come.
Maybe what I liked about cars was that they represented adventure and could literally take you to another place. Though I now think of my childhood as largely idyllic, there were two threatening shadows looming that every kid wanted to escape back then—unthinkable tragedies that could strike at any time: polio and the atomic bomb. Polio was the invisible killer. Though I wasn’t aware of anyone in our little town who suffered from it, we were all instructed on how to avoid contracting the disease. The constant reminder of a photo of some poor child in an “iron lung” was enough to scare the daylights out of you. Amazing myths arose in daily conversations with classmates. It was bad enough for us kids, but the moms and dads were really scared too. A couple of pieces of crucial advice that were drilled into me: never cut your apple in two pieces using the side of your metal lunchbox and avoid public swimming pools because of the unknown bacteria lurking in the murky waters. This didn’t make too much sense but, thank God, within a couple of years Dr. Salk invented his vaccine, which saved the world.
As kids, we figured if polio didn’t get us, the atomic bomb just might do it instead. We had regular bomb drills at school that taught us to “duck and cover.” The Atomic Age, as it came to be known, produced some interesting science fiction movies out of Hollywood that dealt with the possible after-effects of an atomic explosion: giant mutant ants in the movie Them and a giant reptilian monster in the Japanese classic Godzilla. While this was very entertaining for us kids, the specter of mass destruction in our weekly “duck and cover drills” was deeply implanted in our brains. Finally, the government realized many years later that this exercise wasn’t very effective in surviving an atomic bomb attack. As for the bomb? We still haven’t quite figured out how to deal with that issue yet.
Maybe those threats, and a need for escapism, also contributed to my love of Hopalong Cassidy and the other cowboys of the screen, both large and small. Soon my love for fantasy and adventure that was fueled by the television only deepened, as my imagination was sparked by a budding love of reading. Mrs. Trethaway, along with my mother and father, encouraged me, and I discovered it was something I really loved. I would practice every night with my father, who would have me read articles to him from the Los Angeles Times. It was great practice. Soon, my world expanded into fiction: The Hardy Boys, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Arthur Conan Doyle, Rudyard Kipling, and comics—the absolute greatest. I loved all the Action Comics, featuring heroes such as Superman and Batman, but I was also drawn to the Classic Comics, which published a series of condensed versions of classic literature, complete with illustrations.
Every kid who ever read comics in the ’50s will now remember that the inside back cover of so many of them featured full-page ads for Charles Atlas’s bodybuilding program. There was the man himself, in leopard-print bikini briefs, flexing his mighty arms. The standard sales tool was a cartoon showing a skinny guy with his girlfriend on the beach. Then, of course, a big bully would come along, kick sand in his face, and humiliate him in front of his girl. But not to worry. Charles Atlas could easily remedy this problem if you sent in your money and diligently followed his workout instructions. These ads were mighty convincing, and every kid entering adolescence wanted to become an unstoppable muscleman. You just knew no one would ever mess with you again if you could end up looking like Charles Atlas!
I must have seen those ads a million times, and they finally got to me when I was around twelve years old. Along with many of my peers around the country, I sent away for the official Charles Atlas Bodybuilding Course. The wait was unbearable. Each time we would go into town to pick up our mail, I would hunt through the stack of envelopes to see if Mr. Atlas had responded. Finally, one day the mysterious plain-wrapped envelope arrived. All the secrets to becoming an impressive physical specimen lay inside, just waiting for me to apply them. I tore open the package that contained the complete instructions, along with photographs and everything I would need to become a guy to be feared and respected. No one was ever going to kick sand in my face or “pound me,” which was our term back then for getting beat up.
I must have stuck with the course for maybe two or three months, practicing in my room every day with an occasional eye toward my mirror to see if anything miraculous had occurred yet. No such luck. To this day I have never met anyone my age who benefited from Mr. Atlas’s instruction, but it was a relatively inexpensive way to seek out a better life for a skinny kid.
Those were the days when you sent away for all kinds of cool things that were advertised on the backs of cereal packages or in magazines l
ike Popular Mechanics, Police Gazette, and True Adventure. These publications had the greatest artwork on the covers: big tough guys with machine guns saving buxom blondes and holding off the Japanese army with one hand. Inside you’d see things like, “Only $14.95! Send away today for the ‘Wolf Killer,’ genuine Italian push-button stiletto!” The picture of the “Wolf Killer” was more than enough to motivate me to gather up the necessary funding. Of course, I sent away for one and it arrived approximately three weeks later, all the way from the exotic land of Florida. Wow! It was just like the knife in the movie Blackboard Jungle. Somehow, that knife disappeared soon after. It probably ending up in my dad’s secret drawer, where so much of my good stuff was locked away after getting confiscated.
The really exciting reading material, however, was at the barber shop, where one could gaze on all sorts of publications that were of particular interest to boys and young men. My father took me to see Cliff, the town barber, every two weeks. I would get lost perusing all those magazines, and there were rumors that there were other, more exotic magazines stashed in the back for the older folks.
My dad always instructed Cliff to “leave the sideburns on” (whatever that meant), but all us boys wore crewcuts or buzz cuts then, like you’d see a guy get on his first day of bootcamp. It was the end of the Korean War, and that was the prevailing fashion for guys my age. Some of the older high school boys, however, were starting to wear ducktails or pachuco hairstyles, thanks to a popular young singer named Elvis Presley. To certain girls, this was a major attraction. But to us, it didn’t matter. Girls were still an alien species yet to be discovered. But that was all about to change. In fact, a lot of things were about to change.
CHAPTER THREE
CARRY ME HOME
It’s easy to describe what my life was like in Rancho Santa Fe back in the 1950s, but it’s a little harder to pinpoint who I was as an individual in terms of my values, beliefs, and understanding of the world around me. I mentioned that my father was Jewish by birth but atheist in practice. My mother, on the other hand, was baptized in the Presbyterian Church as a child. She embraced a hazy sort of Christian faith that wasn’t really discussed. Her cousin, Joe Broadley, was a Presbyterian minister, and she would take us to his church every now and then. We certainly rarely attended formal services with any kind of consistency, however, so church wasn’t a big part of my experience when I was young.
Rancho Santa Fe, for one reason or another, had a sizeable population of Christian Scientists. Founded by Mary Baker Eddy in Boston at the turn of the century, the group was described as a “new thought metaphysical faith.” Christian Science was based on something like “mind over matter.” In other words, all matter was an illusion, while the perfect being was the spiritual being. One was never really physically sick and only made the choice to be out of balance. Those who embraced the philosophy claimed they could, through prayer, conquer all disease and misfortune. Unfortunately, it was a theology that resulted in worsening illnesses and sometimes premature deaths.
By the time my little sister Cathy and I were getting a bit older, my mother was suddenly struck with the impulse that somebody in the family should get some religious training. Since it was a popular religious community in our town, she took us to a Christian Science Sunday school for a time. It wasn’t bad, but it ended up not being something we committed to for more than a brief time. With the exception of singing “Onward Christian Soldiers,” I barely remember anything about my church education.
I suffered from asthma as a kid, which could be very frightening but was generally controlled with medication. One night, while sleeping over at a friend’s home whose family were Christian Scientists, I had a terrifying asthma attack. Being away from home—and away from my medicine—I tried to tough it out, gasping for every breath. Hubert Brooke, my friend’s dad, eventually came into the bedroom and handed me what looked like a clove lifesaver. “Chris,” he said, “take this and your asthma will go away in five minutes.” And in five minutes it went away! Truly amazed, I went home the next day and told my mother we needed to get some of those magic remedies for ourselves. Cathy and I still weren’t on any sort of conscious search for spiritual enlightenment, but we sure stocked up on those clove lifesavers.
Another source I looked to as I tried to understand my own identity was my grandparents. As a kid, I was blessed to have two grandmothers in my life. My grandmother on my father’s side, Lillian Greenburg, was born in England sometime in the 1880s. She grew up, got married, and had a son named Alex. Lillian ultimately divorced her first husband, however, and immigrated with her young son to America soon after the turn of the century. Ending up in Washington, DC, she met and married Joseph Hillman, a recent immigrant from Russia. They soon had a child—my father, David—and not long after, they packed up and moved out west to begin a new life in Los Angeles.
My grandfather was a tailor, so they set up shop in Boyle Heights, which was originally the Jewish section of Los Angeles. Since he passed away in the late ’30s, the details of Joseph’s history still remain somewhat of a mystery. Apparently, he was a very quiet and polite man who worked hard to support his new family. I can’t imagine how he got the name “Hillman,” having immigrated from Russia. It’s hardly a Russian name, so the Ellis Island immigration people must have had an interesting time providing shortened and Americanized names to the new arrivals.
My father’s half-brother, Alex, was, by all accounts, a professional thief who served time in jail. I remember visiting my grandma when I was young and seeing his framed picture on her table. He looked like the actor Paul Muni with black, wavy hair and a pencil-thin mustache that was so popular among men in the ’30s. His story was one of those mysterious family secrets, the kind that all families keep hidden away. My dad was the hardworking, straight ahead, and focused son who, growing up poor, worked his way over to Hawaii and back on a tramp steamer in the early ’20s. His adventure was right out of a Kipling or Jack London story; my father the adventurer, the world traveler. These early experiences added to his creative genius; which helped him flourish in the coming years. After earning enough money as an able seaman, he put himself through UCLA, graduating with honors and a bachelor’s degree in journalism. Alex, however, was certainly the proverbial “black sheep” of the family. He had died by the time I was born, so I’ll likely never really know where the two brothers diverged.
My paternal grandmother was my only window into the world of Jewish ethnicity. Between 1950 and 1955, I would sometimes visit her in her apartment near Fairfax Avenue in Los Angeles. It was as if I was transported into another country and another century. There were wonderful things cooking on the stove, strange and new cuisine that I soon got used to and loved to eat. We would walk hand-in-hand down to the old Farmers Market on Third Street. Occasionally, we’d ride the bus there, which was even more of an adventure for a kid from the country. Grandma Hillman knew everyone in the Farmer’s Market and made it a point to always take me to see the talking Mynah bird that occupied one of the spaces. I was mesmerized; here was a bird looking me in the eye and talking!
Every now and then my grandmother would come down to the Ranch and stay with us. That’s where I would become the bad grandson, sneaking up on her in the kitchen when she was cooking and yelling, “Mouse!” at the top of my lungs. She nearly had a heart attack when I pulled that stunt and would point her finger at me and scream, “Meshugge,” which means “crazy” in Yiddish. We would watch television together, and whenever any footage of Hitler came on the screen, she would throw something at the TV and scream some Yiddish curse words. I dearly loved my grandmother, and I remember telling her, when I grew up, I was going to make a lot of money and buy her a Cadillac. When I was in sixth grade, however, she quietly fell asleep and had a heart attack at the age of seventy-six.
In terms of character and background, my grandmothers were as different as fire and water. My mother’s mother, Catherine Charlton, was born in Georgetown, Texas, in the 1880s
and came from an old established family called the Cheshires. At the turn of the century, she visited Los Angeles with her father. While there, she met my grandfather, Everett Charlton, a native of the city. His father—my great grandfather, Charlie Charlton—moved to Los Angeles in 1884, traveling across the country from Newton, Massachusetts, by train, wagon and horseback. Charlie was a musician in the LA Shriner band and a member in good standing with the Musicians Union, Local 47. For his part, my grandpa Everett was a good tenor in the church choir. Catherine and Everett had a long courtship, which was quite the normal affair in those days, and were married in Los Angeles in the early 1900s.
My grandfather ran a successful insurance agency in downtown Los Angeles and, after building up his business, was able to start a family and build their home on Doheny Drive in what later came to be known as Beverly Hills. My mother was born in 1914, the middle sister of three girls: Doris, the oldest; Elizabeth Ann (my mother); and Catherine, the youngest. Grandma Charlton was hellfire on wheels, a tough Texas gal who ran a tight ship. Grandpa was a quiet and patient man, and I remember him very fondly.
My visits to Grandma and Grandpa Charlton were a completely different experience than my times with my paternal grandmother. The Charltons were classic white Anglo-Saxon Protestants and, unfortunately, they harbored a bit of a racist worldview. Grandma was brought up in East Texas, and anyone who wasn’t white and Christian was someone to be wary of. The Charltons did not want their daughter marrying a Jewish man, so my poor mom and dad ended up getting married at the Justice of the Peace in downtown Los Angeles. This was a thorn in the family’s side while she was alive, but I still loved Grandma Charlton just as much as I loved Grandma Hillman.
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