That Summer

 

Newton’s cradle is a devise that illustrates the conservation of momentum and energy. It’s a hypnotic toy of five steel balls. When one sphere at the end is lifted and released it strikes the stationary sphere transmitting a force through the other stationary spheres that pushes the last sphere forward. One of my college professors had one on his desk and he showed me something interesting one day.  

He said, “If you only see half of the devise it looks like one sphere is behaving erratically. It’s only by expanding your view that you understand cause and effect.”

            I’ve been thinking about that lately given the current climate. I ask myself can I gain a wider perspective when what I want to do is fade away. My wanting to withdraw could be interpreted as indifference but I don’t think it is.

None of us are born indifferent. It’s a protection, a shield against being scorned, laughed at or singled out for having intense emotions. My protective shield of indifference was first planted when my parents divorced. It became clear in the ensuing chaos that us kids were on our own to figure it out. This was the era when many said,  “They’re just kids, when they fall they bounce.”

The first real episode that made me aware of this ideology happened when I had strep throat, but that story is for another time. This is about a time when I made the decision that I didn’t matter.

It was the summer between seventh and eighth grade. I was eleven and the youngest in our collective of friends. Kathy had turned twelve in February, Lynnie in March, Syndi (pronounced Cindy, it’s a long story and I’ll get to it) in April and Cathy had turned twelve way back in January. Just to point out, we had to work out how to address Kathy with a K and Cathy with a C but I’ll get to that, too.

I wasn’t to turn twelve until the last golden week of summer. I was comforted knowing I would be twelve at the start of eighth grade. I had that going for me. At this point, I was the flat chested lanky one of the group.

Two summers earlier, after the dust had settled from the long and messy divorce of my parents, my mother drove us half way across the country to sunny Southern California. Even at nine years old I knew, for my mother this was a new beginning, a chance to escape the gossip of righteous relatives and the Catholic community in which we lived.

Somewhere along that long hot drive from Minnesota, past the Rocky Mountains, Las Vegas, and into the basin of Los Angeles, any rules guiding our family completely evaporated. My mother’s newfound freedom would set in motion disruptive consequences. At the time, blame was placed squarely on us kids for behaving badly, acting out, and causing trouble. My older brother, already in rebel mode during the divorce, caught the brunt of it much like the fifth steel ball in Newton’s Cradle.

We moved to California because USC granted my mother a full scholarship to complete her master’s degree in English Literature. It was the 1960’s and universities were looking for older students that’d make a positive impact. As an intelligent, newly divorced woman seeking a profession, she was an excellent candidate.

We arrived a week before school started and rented a house in Palos Verdes Estates. My older sister and brother enrolled at Palos Verdes High School, my younger brother went to Lunada Bay Elementary and I was placed at Margate Intermediate.

That first year was a shock. A Midwest family settling into a wealthy California community, putting it mildly, we stuck out. Our shoes, hair and clothes gave us away. Hard soled shoes, fall colored sweaters and ‘done’ hair were the essentials of living in the Midwest but foreign in the land of canvas Vans, tropical colored shirts and long straight hair. After the first day of school I never rolled my hair or wore my saddle shoes again. I caught it from my mother that I wouldn’t wear my saddle shoes, as she paid ‘good money’ for them. How could I explain what she didn’t understand?

The streets curved and twisted gently in Palos Verdes Estates. Not the hard right and left angles of which I had known. School friends Syndi and Lynnie lived down the street kitty corner from one another. Their houses hid behind great walls of greenery.

In the Midwest, homes were decorated with flowerbeds cheerfully greeting visitors and passers by. Front doors proudly stood in the center of the house with wide front porches to protect people from the weather when arriving and to offer a place to sit and enjoy a cool summer night or watch a thunderstorm. Behind the houses were alleys where children of every age played every game possible. Touch football, basketball, baseball, capture the flag and kick the can were occasionally interrupted by cars as fathers returned from work to park inside garages not attached to the house. Old barns repurposed to protect cars from winter ice and summer hail.

In Palos Verdes, garages were the focal point. Overgrown jasmine bushes and eucalyptus trees dominated the sides of each house. I remember getting the feeling of ‘do not come any closer’ from these houses.  When Lynnie offered to walk with me to school, I waited for her in the driveway.

The first year in California passed in a blur.

By seventh grade, I gained acceptance in the pre-teen community. Singing in chorus greatly helped my integration. An eighth grade boy, Brad Starr, (yes, he looked exactly as his name sounded) sat next to me and word got out he liked my singing voice and said I was funny. At the time, I was oblivious to his feelings. In my mind, why would he like me? Beverly Kincaid, also in chorus, also in eighth grade, was the girl every boy liked. She had long skinny legs, blond hair and wore white lipstick. Nevertheless, his nod to my singing and sense of humor gave the tip to my acceptance.

Our collective of girlfriends had expanded to include Tina and Kimberly.  Calling out Kathy, or Cathy became confusing. Tina would add, “Kathy with a K”, or “Cathy with a C” when addressing either. Syndi suggested Kathy add her middle name and be called Kathy Ann. Kathy said she’d rather die. (Ann was her mother’s name so, you know, tsk, gross.) Cathy with her practical mathematical mind said, “Oh, just call me Cath.” And that was settled.

As to Syndi and the spelling of her name, I asked her once as we hiked up the dirt trail to school. Her mother and father thought they were unable to have children and they fostered a girl, her older sister Monica. Three years later, much to their delight and surprise, they got pregnant. Convinced it was a boy, they settled on Sydney, a nod to their Australian homeland. And being rather hard headed when he turned out to be her they named her Syndi. Pronounced Cindy.

Finally, the school year ended and the beach with sun and surf and boys beckoned. But first we needed new bathing suits. It meant only one thing: a trip to the Peninsula Shopping Center. With twenty dollars burning in my pocket from babysitting and cleaning houses, all that was needed was a ride.

Turned down by Cath’s older brother and Tina’s mother, Lynnie bit the bullet and asked her mother for the second time. She agreed with the stipulation that we were given one hour to shop. She would take us when she did her grocery shopping and if we weren’t at the car in time she’d leave. 

None of us wore wristwatches so how we were to keep an eye on the time wasn’t discussed. We were just happy to be going. Cath, being both mathematical and practical, every so often, asked the salesladies the time. Even with that, we were five minutes late returning to the car. Luckily the market was crowded that day and Lynnie’s mother, ever the social butterfly, sat on one of the outdoor benches and chatted with friends. We waited for her twenty minutes. But hey, no harm no foul.

All of us bought two-piece bathing suits except Lynnie. She felt she was too fat for a two-piece and got a pretty one piece with a small skirt around her hips. My suit was a Hawaiian floral pattern in sage green and ivory. I remember it cost $12.99 (a fortune back then) but it was well made and fit me perfectly so, Cath told me I couldn’t pass it up. The next hurdle was to get it past my mother before she coveted it as hers.

She’d already taken over a navy blue dress and a pair of dark green suede shoes my grandmother sent me for Christmas, so I felt justified in being cautious. I hid it between the box springs and mattress until I could wear it to the beach. When she found it in the laundry basket, she hit the roof that I dare buy (and more importantly wear) a two-piece to the beach. There were threats to return it. Fortunately, I had already baptized it in the Pacific Ocean. There was nothing that could be done. I suspected however, by how she threw the suit in my face, she’d tried it on but it didn’t fit so it was mine now.

Syndi, Lynnie and I enrolled in summer school. We took art from Mrs. White and math from Mr. Mac Elroy. None of us liked math, but we were told to brush up on our math skills because eighth grade math was way hard. All of us got massive crushes on the dark-haired single Mr. Mac Elroy. I think that was the only time I understood math. It took me until junior year in high school to figure out that the teacher had nothing to do with my learning the subject. It helped if I could understand their presentation, but it was my job to understand.

Our group went to Torrance Beach as often as we could beg, barter or cajole a ride from family members. Kathy told us she just had to go to the beach as often as possible. I suspected it had to do with her acne, which was massive, because she rarely went in to swim. I was in the water constantly. I loved to body surf. It felt like I was flying. With every mother and older brother fed up with driving us to the beach, eventually we had to come up with an alternative.

Palos Verdes had no busses and none of our bicycles worked so we were stumped. One day we made the decision to walk. It was a little over two miles to the Torrance Beach cove from Kathy’s house. Not everyone wanted to walk. At 10 AM that Wednesday we were a small group. Kathy, Syndi, Lynnie and I met, put on our tennis shoes and headed north on Palos Verdes Drive.

I should mention now, athletically the four of us were very different. In track and field, I was one of the fastest girls in cross-country and the 800-meter run. Kathy pulled her weight in relay races and short sprints. Syndi could jump any height with grace and style. Lynnie, politely saying, was not athletic.

Lynnie was cherubic with blue eyes and blond curls. Her compassion and kindness inspired the rest of us to behave better. Walking to the beach that day, we slowed our pace for her. I carried my aqua blue pocket transistor radio and sang to The Animals “The House of the Rising Sun” as we set out.

Palos Verdes Estates borders the rocky edge of the Pacific Ocean. The main road winds along the shoreline buttressed by craggy hills. That winter, a scene from a movie was filmed in the main cove. Tony Curtis starred. Lynnie’s mother got word of the filming and we raced to the spot to see a real live movie star and film crew. Remembering that day, we giggled as we went over the details of how short Tony Curtis was and how big his head looked. We couldn’t wait for the movie to open in theatres.

By this time, we had walked about a quarter of a mile in our quest to the beach. Rounding the curve that brought the road up against the craggy hills to our right, we slowed. Perhaps because we were out of the direct sun and the cooler air gave us a moment of comfort.

Along this stretch, the boulevard funneled into a one-lane roadway and hugged the contours of the hills for the next mile. There were two separate dirt areas large enough for a car to pull off to the side if needed to let faster cars pass or change the inevitable flat tire.

The first outlet was the largest. A natural inlet surrounded by wild prickly bushes that dominated the hill with room for two cars. The second was much smaller, easily ignored and desolate. We passed the first area and Kathy demanded we pick up our pace.

The path along the road was single file at this point. There was no sidewalk on either side of this strip of PV Drive, just a dirt trench. We rounded the curve. Nestled in the smaller turnout a white van was parked with its rear door wide open. It was a curious sight and we slowed slightly. As we continued, our view shifted to gain a perspective inside the van. A man, perhaps thirty, dark hair, sat naked, fully erect and wickedly smiling at us.

Kathy screamed. The shouted to us, “Run! Run!”

 We did.

Kathy, with her talent at short distances, vanished around the corner in a cloud of dust. I, being the long distance runner, was just getting my legs going when from behind me I heard Syndi yell, “Wait! Wait!” I looked back. Lynnie was gasping trying her best to move quickly to no avail. Syndi was pulling her. I slowed and placing Lynnie’s arm around my shoulder supported her around the curves towards Malaga Cove shopping center. Syndi and I spotted the man in his white van speed past us, and the hair on the back of my neck crackled.

Lynnie began weeping. Syndi, her eye on the van reassured her, “It’s okay. He’s gone. He’s not stopping.”

We finally made it to where Kathy stopped, which was at the edge of the shopping area. Kathy, still shaking by the time we joined her, told us we needed to go to the police immediately. “You don’t understand, we have to report this,” she spoke through gulps of air.

Luckily, I knew the ‘Welcome to Malaga Cove’ sign was ahead with directions to local businesses. A gold painted arrow pointed to the right for the police station. We walked into the small front office and spoke to the desk officer.

Kathy was clearly upset and a woman officer offered to speak with her privately. The older officer addressed Syndi and I. Lynnie was silent and held my hand in a gesture of thanks.

“Did he have facial hair, a mustache or beard?” No. “How tall was he would you guess he was, about my size?” No, he was smaller. “Was he muscular like me or thin?” No, just normal. “How old was he? Younger than me or older?” Younger. “And you saw him drive past you when you were coming here?” Yes. “Did he look at you when he drove past?” Yes.

The older officer calmly listened and a young officer was dispatched to cruise around the area to see if he could spot anything. By how quickly they responded and how carefully they dealt with us, something told me they knew this man. They’d dealt with him before.

That man’s face is burned in my memory. He wouldn’t be the only strange man inappropriately exposing himself to me, but he was the first. I can give you a detailed description now that I couldn’t as a tongue-tied shocked eleven-year-old. He was a white male about 5’9’-5’10” in his late twenty’s or early thirty’s with hairy legs, arms and chest. He looked like he hadn’t shaved that morning with close-cropped dark hair, a wide toothy mouth and fierce eyes that could have been blue but assuredly not brown. His hands had thick fingers and wide palms when he waved to us. And his head was round not long or angular. The only thing he wore were tan slip-on boat shoes.

I said none of that at the police station.

The police gave us cups of water, took down our names, addresses and phone numbers. Asked if we could identify the man if we saw him again. I could and Syndi could. Kathy said not really and Lynnie gave a flat no.

They asked who we could call to come pick us up. Lynnie’s mother didn’t have the car today because her father was on a job at the San Pedro harbor, Syndi’s mother and father worked downtown LA, and my mother was at USC. I had no idea how to reach her.

Kathy called her mom at the Real Estate office. When she showed up she held Kathy tightly and rocked her gently, saying “My baby, my girl.” They both cried. It took Kathy a year to tell us about her first incident with a peeping tom and how it escalated.

We loaded into their Buick station wagon and went home.

That night the police called each of our families as a check up. A woman officer spoke with my mother. I hadn’t told anyone what happened simply because no one was home to tell. My sister came home in a fit at four o’clock and stormed around the house, my older brother was out with friends and probably wouldn’t be home until after curfew and my younger brother, who returned from cub scouts at three o’clock, was seven. What would I say to him?

By seven o’clock my mother and her friends arrived all excited to grill burgers, talk about poetry and drink wine. What was I supposed to say? “Guess what? Some guy was naked in a van when we walked to the beach today. I saw his thing.”

It seemed inappropriate to bring it up at their party. I got busted when the police called at eight o’clock. After the call I overheard one of my mother’s friends whisper to her, “Don’t make a big deal of it. She wasn’t hurt so why go over it again?”

No questions were asked. Ever.

It wasn’t my first experience of careless indifference and it wouldn’t be my last. It was difficult, like that steel ball in Newton’s Cradle, not to make up that I wasn’t worth the trouble.

Next blog:  The next incident of that summer