Remembering moms

Before catalytic converters and unleaded gasoline, there was Regular or Ethyl.

If you were a child of the 60s, you probably amused yourself with the question, “Who’s Ethyl?" I thought it was a character on the "Honeymooners" or "I Love Lucy.” And, I wondered why gas station attendants (remember them?) kept asking my parents that question. I learned the answer later in life, but by the time I could pay for my gas, Ethyl had gone from the pumps in California.

Those were the good old days when air pollution in Los Angeles felt like something. By that, I mean, the air was so stinking and noxious it made my eyes water and my lungs burn. When the weather got warm, you were likely to find me in one of two places at Altadena Elementary School: either playing kickball on the asphalt playground or in the nurse’s office gasping for breath. One led to the other. If you want to experience the feeling for yourself, light a match and inhale the fumes. But don’t. Really. Don’t.

 I vaguely remember the mayor of Los Angeles, Sam Yorty, making what today I would call a Trump recommendation – to put giant gasoline-powered fans on top of the San Gabriel Mountains to blow the smog into the desert! Politicians played scientists even then.

In San Francisco

My grandmother visited us in California in 1965.

 In 1965, my German grandmother came to visit. We flew to San Francisco to meet her. My dad rented a Chevy Impala ragtop and drove us back to Altadena via Yosemite. If you look closely at the photograph taken in front of Yosemite Falls (above), you can tell that eight 1960s adults could easily fit in that car. Today, maybe five.

 My grandmother spent the summer with us in Altadena. My brother and I didn’t speak a lick of German and my grandmother was equally talented in English. So to entertain her we would perform pratfalls, magic tricks, and my favorite, seemingly banging my head on an open door (you make the noise by kicking the door with your foot). It always got a hearty “Um Gottes willen!” from my Grossmutti. My brother got the same result whenever he would throw himself up against the dashboard of the car while my mom pulled up to a red light. At least I think he was pretending. Maybe he’s the reason seatbelts were invented.

 Between shows, my mom and grandmother would put on shows of their own. The dining room table became their stage. 

They took turns standing on it. Whoever was standing was being measured by the other with a cloth measuring tape in preparation for a new blouse or suit. When the logistics were finished, the table was covered with the pattern my grandmother brought from Germany and a bolt of cloth that my mother picked up somewhere in Pasadena. In the middle, they placed a fabric tomato bristling with straight pins. And you thought clothes came from a store. 

There were other days when the table became a staging area for an assault on tarnish. You see, the components of the Los Angeles smog at the time were hydrogen sulfite and sulfur dioxide. Not only did the smog burn my lungs, but the sulfur in it was blackening my parent’s wedding gifts.

 Who knew?

Well, my high school chemistry teacher and my grandmother did. And she thought it unacceptable. 

All the tarnished items she could find in our house were arranged on a newspaper at one end of the table. At the other end, she placed a few other sheets of newspaper. Then she and my mother would arrange themselves across from each other in the middle with some rags and homemade cleaning solutions and begin the assembly-line task of polishing. 

The process probably took an hour, but because there was afternoon coffee to be had with a piece of homemade Apfelstrudel or a piece of Zwetschgendatschi (plum cake) with homemade whipped cream, the hour lasted maybe three. That was the part my brother and I enjoyed the most.

It was also where I started learning German, or at least Bavarian. Watching my Grossmutti and my Mutti enjoying each other’s company over a pot o’ joe (drip, not percolated) and a nice piece of kuchen is a great way to learn anything.

Family reunion

This photo was taken in the 1950s in New York City. My grandmother came to America on a ship.

In the moment

In 1963, my father took a picture of his dad and mom on top of the Chrysler Building. They had come from Elyria, Ohio, to New York City to the second tallest building in the world to look at the tallest building in the world. 

They also came to New York City to visit the expecting Funk “kids.” None of the pictures taken that day show my mother, which makes me suspect my dad was doing the good-husband-thing by giving his parents a tour of the big city so that his wife could take a break from the doting relatives. 

I was born in February 1954 in Flushing Hospital in Queens. 

At the time, my parents lived in an upstairs apartment in a house across the water from LaGuardia Airport. The family who owned the home was The Slocums. They became lifelong friends of my parents. Babies have a way of bonding families. 

I didn’t know my dad’s parents well. My grandmother died of a heart attack when I was still a toddler. In 1959 we moved to California from Nyack, New York. My grandfather stayed in Elyria.

My grandfather, Louis W. Funk, left, is given a gold watch at his retirement.

My brother Kevin was hellbent on shoveling something, even if it was bits of ice and gravel from the driveway.

He worked for a local trucking firm as a driver, and when he retired from the trucking business, he was feted in the local newspaper — the good old days for working stiffs.

The only time I remember being in his house was in 1968. The California Funks went there for Christmas. My brother and I were hoping, praying even, that it would snow. Growing up in Altadena meant it never snowed. We wanted one Danny Kaye and Bing Crosby white Christmas. But not this year. First time in years, according to my grandpa. Undeterred, my brother went out one morning with a giant snow shovel to try to shovel the ice off the drive. He made a lot of noise and probably woke the neighbors.

We did see Santa deliver the milk one morning. He drove a white truck and stopped at several houses on the block, including my grandpa’s and brought “the white stuff” to the front porch.

You could say we had a white Christmas after all – Danny Kaye and Bing Crosby all rolled into one.

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Santa makes deliveries in a Bauer Dairy delivery truck in Elyria, Ohio.

Nurse "Worceshington" was a friend to lonely teen

When I was 12, I spent four or five days on the children’s ward at Huntington Hospital in Pasadena. I was recovering from surgery to repair a hernia. I don’t remember how many other kids there were on the ward — maybe 8 to 12. All the kids were in different states of discomfort making for long nights punctuated with moans and cries and the fluttering of nurse uniforms as we were attended to when we needed attending.

The days were boring. I’m not sure the ward had a TV. And if it did, all a kid could watch during the day back then were soap operas and cooking shows.

To pass the time, my dad bought me a model to build. I called it a “Go Daddy,” but apparently its real name is “Daddy, The Way Out Suburbanite.” I liked building models. Cars and airplanes were my favorites, though I couldn’t name a single product I produced. I knew I built red cars and silver jets. I almost finished an aircraft carrier. Too many pieces, I guess.

Our ‘55 Ford and ‘59 Hillman Minx and my brother’s three wheeler, before Big Wheels.

My dad could have gotten me a ‘55 Ford, my mother’s red car. He drove a Hillman Minx, but I’m pretty sure there were no models of it at Henry’s, the local toy store. I thought the Minx was going to be my car someday. I loved the smell of the straw in its seats and the radio that seemed to only play Angels baseball games.

Today, I wonder if “Go Daddy” reminded my dad of himself and his daily commute to downtown Los Angeles along the winding Pasadena Freeway. Before cars had power steering, you’d get a real upper-body workout on that route. And at 55, you felt like you were flying.

There was an older kid across the aisle from me who was there because of a sledding accident. As I recall, he was sliding down a slope with some buddies when he let his leg dangle out of the sled. It got caught on a tree. The weight of his buddies behind him and the speed of the sled almost ripped him in half (his words). He looked okay to me. He was a tough guy and well-liked by the nurses.

The one nurse I remember was young and pretty. She always pronounced “wash” “wursh” like in Worcestershire Sauce. I think she was even from Worceshington State. And, she liked that guy.

One night, she rolled a TV into the ward while most everyone was asleep and put it next to Rip’s bed. Because I was still awake and once again ambulatory, she brought me over to a chair next to his bed and together we watched Johnny Carson. I was 12, remember. The event was more important to me than Carson’s monologue or guests. It felt like a clandestine operation, one in which I got to stay up late with Rip and Miss Worceshington and listen to a man who was not my dad tell grown-up jokes.

During the day I’d work on my “Go Daddy” model. My mom would visit with my brother and my dad would stop by on his way home from work. I finished the model before being sent home.

I waved good-bye to Rip and left with my mother and my model. Rip and I didn’t actually talk much, ‘cause I was just a kid. But, I was glad he had Miss Worceshington as a friend. I don’t recall that anyone came to visit him. I think she knew that, too.

———

This memory came to mind for a number of reasons. First, it’s never been too far out of mind, but most obviously because of the Covid-19 epidemic and the photos of patients crammed into hospital corridors in New York City, New Orleans, Italy, and China. And, because of the nature of the virus, no one is allowed to visit and comfort those who need comforting. Hospitals are staffed with lots of nurse Worceshingtons. They are the only friends some patients will get to see.