(Scrolling back to 1949 in this memoir will provide baseball junkies with the very essence of baseball and the father/son relationship)

                                                    THE LITERARY WORLD

1963

     Mother, upon coming home from her job as school nurse at Bolsa Grande High school in Garden Grove, was careful not to disturb the budding genius clacking away on a $10 Smith-Corona typewriter in his bedroom. When she asked if she could read my pieces, my retort was, “Maybe someday.”

   Professor Edwards advised me to write about “anything that comes into my mind.” Like pals, we sometimes met in the student union to drink coffee and discuss literature, writers and writing. I told him of my experience with coach Kincaid. He seemed amused, felt Kincaid a reasonable man considering he was a coach. When I pointed out Dawn Meadows, sitting with a handsome preppie she was engaged to across the room, the two involved in intimate whispers broken up by sudden laughs, longing gazes, and tender touches indicating they were on fucking terms, I disclosed to Edwards she’d been my flame and dumped because I was “defeatist and negative and without direction.”

     Edwards burst out laughing. “Oh, heartbreak and rejection are great fuel for writers, Dell. I’ve found you can fall for many different types of women over the years, and the last thing you want at this point in your life is a steady who’s planning out your future together. I’ve been in and out of relationships, and as a writer myself, it can be difficult. I’m still searching at 34. There are times I don’t mind being alone. It was Somerset Maugham who wrote, “No object is more deserving of pity than the married bachelor.” Seeing that young girl with that fellow, well, that’s a sure sign she was never for you, but somebody else might be.”

     Edwards suggested I pursue sports writing. I could make a living and on the side write serious fiction. I’d ALWAYS be writing, and therefore improving. I informed Edwards I had a foul taste in my mouth from baseball and dreaded hanging out in clubhouses or locker rooms. Instead, I wanted to travel the world, then go in the military, and gather experience. Edwards said I already had plenty of experience and to write about my Dad and our relationship, but right now I couldn’t and instead found myself writing about people and subjects and situations I’d never experienced and knew nothing about. He did not discourage this, as long as I wrote.

     Observing fellow writing students, I realized they had nothing in common with me or anybody I’d ever known. With the exception of the two 40ish adults, they were Bohemian and therefore skeptical of established conventions and at times belligerently rebellious, often bickering with these older students who accused them of being naively idealistic. Edwards slyly orchestrated literary, social, political and even cinematic disputes and smiled as he observed them flower into snarling and vituperative shouting matches. Several of the more shabbily dressed girls, who seemed to purposely make themselves look the opposite of Dawn Meadows, sided with J. Hampton Mills and hung out with him in a small and malodorous clique in the student union. They read poetry and idolized the Beat Generation writers, especially Burroughs and Ginsburg, who confused me. They were in love with Fellini movies, abstract art, and hybrid folk/protest music. Half the time I did not know what the hell they were talking about, but I could not wait to get to Edward’s class and join the rousing debates, even if I was regarded as class stooge.

     These days, walking around campus, I observed a vast sea of students as having little inclination to question or rebel against the powers that be or test the authority of the system. They were sheep, searching for mates, single-mindedly pursuing a diploma and the gateway to soulless suburban anonymity, contentment, security, the procreation of more indistinguishable lives and the eternal acquisition of material possessions and a tiny plot of turf on which to build shelter so as to justify their existences. My new classmates vilified such ambitions and in the process established themselves as eloquent haters.

     This anger and hatred caught fire in my gut, providing me with a new, surging passion to express it. I hissed at the prissy and immaculate and well-endowed coeds I had previously drooled over and thought of as potential life-mates. As for the girls in my creative writing class, whose attire approached mine in slovenliness, I viewed them with disgust and fascination, wondering what really lurked beneath the costumes and facades. They ignored me, except to roll their eyes and sigh when I expounded sententiously. In the student union, I was snickered at as an outcast.

     I began to take stock of myself. What was baseball, a simple game, in the great realm of discovery on this planet? How futile was it, poring over major league box scores with hunger every morning as I followed my idols? Christ, I actually had a brain! When Dad looked at me, the worry and consternation on his face was palpable and we had little to say to each other, though Mom and I seemed to be talking about subjects she’d always wanted to talk about with me while Dad appeared suddenly odd man out.

     (Next Sunday installment: The Bohemian Brigade)

    (The beginning of this memoir dates back to 1949 for those scrolling back)

                                                    

                                                      CREATIVE WRITING 102

1963

     “Well?” Mr. Edwards said, as he scanned the faces of those fellow students who were obviously embarrassed at the idiocy of my story and hesitant to even lower themselves and comment on its debasement of the writing society. “Let’s hear your comments.”

     A man around 50 with the old military buzz-cut, not far from me, stood. “This story…it did have some humor.” There was consternation on his face. “But it went nowhere. It was just description. It was a…hodge-podge. I have no idea what he was trying to get across.”

     He sat down and a big, barrel-chested, bushy-bearded guy called J. Hampton Mills, who sat in the front row, stood. He published, edited, and was chief writer of a revolutionary weekly of about 4 pages that attacked the status quo with salacious and outrageous articles hoping to upset or arouse dull, impervious Cerritos commuter students who didn’t give a crap about anything except a diploma that would lead them to middleclass comfort, something J. Hampton Mills in his class tirades despised venally. He was ferocious, mid-twenties, and his voice boomed with authority; an imposing leader of the meager enclave of malcontents against the bomb, war, the gas chamber, America’s inherent racism, and everything else that was wrong with the country.

     “If this piece was a drawing it would be a cartoon for kindergartners…uh, excuse me, pre school kiddies just out of diapers. The scope was microscopic.”

     I tried to block out what came at me next like a barrage of sucker punches to my very existence. Nobody defended me. It was decided that the writer of my supposedly anonymous piece did not possess the depth of a tapeworm, nor the knowledge and experience of an adolescent. But Mr. Edwards held up his hand like a stop sign.

     “Humor,” he said. “This is the only piece by this class with humor, that actually caused a ripple. So I see promise.”

     Groans. Snickers. I was devastated. What the fuck was I DOING here? I should go back and kiss Don Buford’s ass and Doc Bennett’s ass, and Wally Kincaid’s ass! I was a baseball player, an athlete, not a dork! When the class mercifully ended, I waited until everybody was gone so I didn’t have to face any of them in the hallway. I was dropping the class. Shuffling out the door, head down, Edwards called to me. He sat behind his desk, grinning at me. He asked me to sit down, and in a trance I complied, in the front row.

     “Don’t get discouraged,” he said. “I liked your story.”

     “Bullshit. It wasn’t a story. It was garbage. I had no idea how bad I was, how stupid I was, what a disillusioned idiot I was until I heard that asinine gibberish. My crucifixion was justified.”

     He laughed; then sat forward. “Look, the purpose of this class is to expose the truth. You can’t really write until you know yourself, and the best way to know yourself is to listen to your own words and see how they are accepted. It’s painful, but writing is a painful business that calls for deep introspection. Life is painful. Some people never consider writing until the pain in their life becomes unbearable and they have no alternative left but to write.” He smiled at me, a big kid smile; eyes full of humor. “Let me tell you this, Dell: YOU are a writer. Most of the people in this class are aspiring writers who have been at it since they were young and they’re pretty good at a certain level, but you are the only writer with an original voice. The first sentence I read, I KNEW you were a writer. Your words bounce off the page. Now don’t make that sour face. Don’t be so damn hard on yourself! Listen, I would never, ever misguide a student of mine. Dell, I don’t know your background, don’t know why you’ve chosen to write, or what made you want to write, but it seems to me this is your first effort, and there’s a reason for that, and I’m here to make sure you pursue and develop this gift, because if you don’t I would consider that a great waste.
 

     I was dumbstruck. “What makes you think I can actually be a writer, Mr. Edwards?”

     “Dave.”

     “Dave.”

     “Arrogance. I don’t know where it came from, but my God, you possess splendid arrogance. I’d pay to have it. You’ve got a fresh approach and a fearless verbal masculinity. It’s inspiring for me as a teacher of writing to have a student like you in my class. Now you go home and get started on your next assignment, and think about the criticisms, and don’t let them discourage you. I look forward to your next piece.”

     I was speechless. I found myself thanking him. He handed me a paperback copy of “Catch-22.” by Joseph Heller. He informed me my first big steps should be to start my own library of classics, European and Russian masters and obscure underground books by modern writers. From them I would gain inspiration, joy, education, philosophy, understanding of the world and humanity, and the study of style. He said it was necessary I read “the bad stuff as well as the good stuff” so I knew what to do and what not to do. He didn’t want any thanks. His gratification was from teaching and inspiring. Mr. Edwards.

     Out in the hallway, striding past fellow students, I went from hating myself to considering I was special in some way, with a leg up on these pedestrian plodders with their narrow and limited ambitions.

     (Next Sunday installment: A New and Different Mentor.)

     (The beginning of this memoir dates back to 1949 for those scrolling back)

                                                               TUNA FISH

BIG MOE

     Fred Hutchinson and I came up together in the Detroit organization and before shipping out to the South Pacific during the war we played ball on the East coast together and were in the Gene Tunney program, and since we were big league ball players the Navy made us chiefs. Fred was a ground-ball pitcher with good stuff. There was a lot of resentment on the Norfolk based toward us Tunney program chiefs among the old chiefs who’d spent their entire careers getting a chief’s ranking. They were bitter, a tough, nasty bunch, and when Hutch and I—good friends—drank together in the club, well, these chiefs ganged up and gave us a pretty rough time, rode us hard, called us Tuna Fish, which is about as low an insult you can call a Navy man.

     This went on month after month, and we understood it, took it in pretty well, but I guess these chiefs took this as weakness, and it got worse and worse, real personal and vicious, until these goddam chiefs were practically foaming at the mouth, embarrassing us in front of everybody, really enjoying themselves. They hated us, and I could see why: we had pretty young wives, we were ball players, the brass loved us and bet on us like crazy on our games, and if we won we got perks and so on, which were far and few between in those days, so that you almost felt guilty taking them.

     Hutch was a big red-faced guy, some Irish or Scot in him, a serious man, but sweet-natured, a gentleman. But he had a long fuse and a temper that could blow quick, and he could fight. One evening we were at the bar having a few, and these chiefs were all around us and all over us, and it really got nasty and ugly as they tried to out-do each other. I finally looked at Hutch, and his face was redder than usual, and his mouth was tight, like one straight line, and his eyes went coal black, and his cheek was twitching. He said to me, very softly, “Murray, let’s take those goddam old salts outside teach ‘em a lesson.”

     We were in our pretty ice cream uniforms, all white and starched. I finished off my beer and so did Fred, and then he stood and pointed toward the door that led to the big lawn outside in front, and bellowed loud enough to be heard all over the base: “OUTSIDE! The whole goddam bunch of you! We’ll find out who’s Tuna Fish, and who’s Barracuda!”

     We went outside. Earlier in the year I’d put on boxing exhibitions for the troops with the world light-heavyweight champion, and Fred, he was like an angry ox, and we beat up six or seven of these chiefs, one at a time. A pretty good crowd formed, and it got bigger and bigger. We were hitting these chiefs so hard they were groaning and screaming. Chiefs were laying all over the lawn, moaning, crawling around on all fours, bleeding like stuck pigs, their beautiful uniforms all torn up and full of blood.

     Finally an older chief, one with all the chevrons who must have been in a few campaigns, with the big red boozer’s nose, a guy with a real pus gut, he taps me on the shoulder and asks us to stop before the two of us kill all the chiefs in the goddam Navy. After all, he says, we got a war to fight with the goddam Japs over seas, and we’re all in this together, and so we helped up the beat-up chiefs and got their caps for them and put their caps on their heads and led the poor bastards back into the club, and the chiefs bought all our beer and got us good and drunk, and pretty soon we were singing together, leading Navy cheers, and they toasted us, because we weren’t Tuna Fish no more, we were Barracuda, and after that we could do no wrong with those chiefs.

     (Next Sunday installment: Creating Writing 102)                                                       

     (The beginning of this memoir goes back to 1949 for those scrolling back)

                                                         CREATIVE WRITING 101

     At Cerritos, I decided to take only classes I liked—creative writing, English Literature, and a liberal arts agenda. I was now strictly a student. The only person I associated with on campus was my ex baseball team mate, Fred Dyer. My writing class, which was comprised of students who had been writing fiction, poetry and journalism in the past, and a few older people wishing to learn to write, was taught by a mop-haired, youthful man around 30 named David Lewellen Edwards. He was rather shapeless, with a broad, sensitive face. He wore baggy slacks and short-sleeve shirts. On our first day of class he delivered a detailed account of who he was and what he was about. He grew up in Hollywood. His dear friend was Richard Chamberlain, star of the TV series, Dr. Kildare, and Edwards was “very happy for his success,” though Chamberlain was an accomplished “stage actor.”

     Edwards was proud of his Welch ancestry and spent a summer at an estate in Wales partying and studying for his sabbatical with Richard Burton and Liz Taylor, whom “one

could listen to for hours” as they recited Shakespeare or carried on between themselves while downing prodigious amounts of booze. Burton’s memory, even in a drunken state, was pure genius and his aura spellbinding. Edwards’ writing mentors were F. Scott Fitzgerald, “who wrote the truest sentences,” Lawrence Durrell and Henry Miller. He shambled about in an un-athletic gait and used his hands when he talked, seldom raised his voice, did not lecture, wished to be called Dave, and NOT, God forbid, Mr. Edwards!

     Our first assignments were to write about anything that came to our minds, so I dashed out a ridiculous vignette of a southerner named Virgil Pilch who was so lazy he “did less than nothing if humanly possible,” and spent most of his time vegetating on the front porch with his dog, who was lazier than Pilch and rose up one evening to bite him on the ass after he expelled a ceaseless barrage of foul flatus.  

     I had no idea where such drivel originated, but I was nevertheless proud of my piece and read it over and over with increasing approval and self-congratulation. Mr. Edwards

spent each class discussing writers and writing but taught no structure or plot, suggested no self-help books, renounced formulas, and instead urged us to read the great writers and the underground writers and learn from them, and, after we grew weary of imitating them, continue writing until we “found our own voice and style.”

     To my shock and mortification, after Edwards eloquently read a few clever short stories by students who I suspected sat up front and appeared AVANT GARDE and dressed in garish if utilitarian apparel, and whose pieces were accepted with relative civility, lukewarm praise and guarded criticism, he picked up a sheaf of papers and began reading my Virgil Pilch nonsense.

     I instantly felt exposed and ten times the fear than the day I was to face Don Drysdale as a 15 year old. My stomach turned to battery acid. My face grew red-hot. I broke into a cold sweat. I couldn’t breathe. And although Edwards did not announce my name before reading my piece, heads began to swivel around to peer at the ex baseball player scrunched down in his chair in the back of the room. By the third sentence I was ready to sprint out the door and never return. People frowned at each other with quizzical expressions, as if to ask “who the hell could write this retarded bullshit?” Gruesome stuff. No story. No plot. No theme. Some coherency, yes, but no beginning, middle or end. A southern accent hokey and stolen from Thomas Wolfe. Mr. Edwards finished, smiled, placed my assignment on his desk, then sat on the corner of his desk, and asked the class for commentary.

     I was unprepared totally for the humiliation and excoriation I knew was about to come, and which was deserved.

     (Next Sunday Installment: Big Moe—“Tuna Fish.”)