To all my good friends and acquaintances from the M-W class of ’69:
For most of the past 15 years I have greatly regretted not attending the 20 th year reunion. And for the past several weeks I have greatly looked forward to seeing you all at the 35 th year reunion!
I’ve led something of a nomadic life and have worked a number of unusual jobs since leaving Monroe in 1969. Currently I am the production coordinator for an audiobook publisher in Auburn, California, located at an elevation of 1000’ in the beginnings of the Sierra foothills, about thirty miles east of Sacramento.
On weekends I announce for radio station KXJZ, the NPR affiliate in Sacramento.
I’ve been dabbling in greeting cards and will show you some examples at Arden House. I’m starting to write a play and, if I manage to get it produced, I hope it makes “you” laugh and “me” money!
These days I live in Fair Oaks, located between Auburn and Sacramento.
When Bruce asked me if I would submit a bio, I thought: Each of us is worth a book.
And I almost wrote one for this site. But once I realized I might use up “all” the space on Bruce’s drive, I stopped after composing several vignettes. None is too long (I hope). Besides, you can easily scroll past those with headings or lead paragraphs that do not hold your attention. All of the vignettes are non-fictitious, that is to say, as “true” as memory and honest interpretation will allow.
Following the last vignette are a few photo images.
My heartfelt thanks to all the people working to make the reunion possible. I can’t wait for the first weekend in October, when I hope to hear many of “your” stories and to tell you a few more of mine.
—Eric
My First Few Hours in California — Paying and Not Paying Attention
Rarely will a native-born easterner who has taken up residence in California ever become jaded about palm trees. The remarkable flexibility of their trunks when subjected to high winds, the hairy fluttering of their fronds, the astonishingly shallow and dense root system revealed when one of them does get blown over—all remain a source of wonder or delight for those of us who climbed sturdy limbs and had tree houses when we were children.
After stepping off the plane at LAX, I stared and stared at the palms. The sight of them announced I was finally “here”, in the bosom of southern California… Hollywood… sunshine…The Beach Boys.… My life on the Coast had hardly begun and already it seemed good.
A bus from the airport dropped me off in West Los Angeles and I started down the street with a large and heavy suitcase in each hand. Moments later, a pretty, young surfer girl turned the corner in her car, slowed to a pace that matched mine, and waved at me.
Had my grin been any wider, you could have slipped a pizza between my lips. With my head turned in her direction, I kept walking straight down the sidewalk until Wham!, my face slammed into the pole of a parking sign near the curb.
The young lady looked pained for me, but then, seeing I wasn’t seriously hurt, she laughed good-naturedly, shook her head, and drove away. I rubbed my face and laughed, too, thinking that if only a camera had been running for the past minute to capture the scene, I might have won some quick work in Hollywood.
I Arrive in Riverside — Led to The Mission Inn by M-W Classmate Jim Talbot
Two months before I left Monroe to begin my studies at U.C. Riverside, I received a letter from the university informing me there were no more dormitory rooms available for the start of the school year. Included in the correspondence was a meager list of Riverside hotels and motels suggested as alternative student housing.
Doing long-distance research was much more difficult in those pre-Internet days. Grasping at a straw, I called Jim Talbot. He had lived in California until his father, a museum curator, moved the family from San Jose to Monroe, where Mr. Talbot took a position with Museum Village.
My hopes rose a bit when Jim told me he had been to Riverside a few times. I wanted to know about The Mission Inn, one of the hotels on the list. It was described as “unique” and “historic.” I was born in the Bronx and spent the first nine years of my life there, so a certain amount of skepticism and suspicion is part of my birthright. Thus I said, “I dunno, Jim. Mission Inn? It sounds like a flophouse run by religious administrators.”
Jim disagreed. “Eric, whatever you do, don’t miss your chance to live in The Mission Inn,” he insisted passionately. “It’s the opportunity of a lifetime!”
Jim always had struck me as a straight shooter, so I contacted The Mission Inn, requested, received, and subsequently signed a contract to live there. But even Jim’s reassurance couldn’t stop me from muttering “Mission Inn” under my breath on occasion as I prepared to depart from Monroe.
After arriving in California and spending a short but highly enjoyable dalliance in West Los Angeles, I took a bus to Riverside. With each passing mile, my spirits sunk lower. In the late 1960’s, Riverside and nearby San Bernardino had some of the worst smog in the nation. The afternoon sun turned an angry red as it fought to shine through the crap in the atmosphere. There were stretches of landscape that looked like a running sore; cities such as San Dimas, where rusted automobiles on flat tires filled back yards hemmed in by ruined fences with scrawny cats perched atop them.
I was much deflated by the time the bus pulled into the Riverside station. A station clerk told me The Mission Inn was just a few blocks away. The sour sights I had seen from the bus, along with the unhealthy brown air I was now breathing in the city of Riverside itself, plunged me into a funk. All my negative thoughts of The Mission Inn were rekindled. I approached it like a man on his way to the penitentiary, fully expecting to meet with legions of bed lice and rodents.
When I finally arrived at my destination, I could not believe what I saw. The Mission Inn is the embodiment of a California fairy tale, a breathtaking hodgepodge of a structure that sprawls over an entire city block. All of the California missions founded by the Padres—Spanish priests, not ballplayers—are architecturally represented in the hotel (hence the name).
When I lived at The Mission Inn, it contained a large European clock of the sort seen in public squares, with life-sized figures revolving around the base. I recall one of those tableaux was of a hunter chasing a bear. There were catacombs beneath the building, where an impressive collection of Tibetan bells was stored.
So many famous novelists had stayed at the Inn—including W. Somerset Maugham, who wrote part of The Razor’s Edge there—that one strip of suites on an upper floor is called “Writers’ Row.” Riverside ‘500’ race drivers traditionally booked rooms at The Inn during the week of the big race. And to this day I believe the not-so-large, young opera singer who was filmed singing on a Spanish-style balcony, late one night towards the end of 1969, may have been the then-unknown Luciano Pavarotti.
“The Mission Inn is a remarkably colorful place,…” I remember writing on a post card to my parents as I lay on a lounge chair at poolside in the heat of January. Glancing up from the card, I noticed the door to the room of another student. He had put a bumper sticker on it that read: A friend with weed / is a friend indeed. Inspired, I continued to write: “…but in no way does it interfere with the pursuit of a higher education.”
(As magnificent as The Mission Inn was when I lived there, it was badly in need of repairs. Had it not been designated a California State Landmark, it probably would have fallen to the wrecker’s ball long ago. Thankfully, the citizens of Riverside came together and raised many millions of dollars to restore the grand establishment to its original glory. It is now a National Historic Landmark. The Mission Inn would be a “great” place to visit if you’re ever in southern California. It’s about 50 miles east of L.A. You can see several pictures of The Mission Inn, all clustered on a single Web page, by going to: www.herecomestheguide.com/sites/detail.htm?site_id=1053)
Paradise Found: Santa Barbara and the Santa Inez Valley — Where I Learn to Handle Fruits of the Sea and Red Wrigglers
Living in The Mission Inn was wonderful, but the smog in Riverside was terrible and I longed for the sea. So I transferred to U.C. Santa Barbara my sophomore year.
Never too hot nor too cold, with mountains to the rear and ocean to the fore, Santa Barbara impressed me with its numerous residents whose story was one of entering the city by chance and immediately deciding to make it their home. (I speak of a time before the soap opera of the same name existed and, along with other forms of publicity that followed, lifted whatever thin veil of secrecy surrounded the place before the 1980’s.)
There is so much floral, architectural, topographical, culinary, and human beauty contained in that corner of the earth that the aesthetics of everyday life become tethered to one’s soul. Were the financial resources necessary to live in Santa Barbara suddenly dropped into my lap, I’d return there before the completion of this sentence.
I waited tables during and after my studies in that Eden-by-the-sea. Not being then the strict vegetarian I am now, I made a continuous circuit of the excellent and diverse restaurants in the city whenever I wasn’t serving food to others or watching how things were done in the kitchen. Serious thoughts of going to chef’s school started running through my head.
One restaurateur I became friendly with joined an investment group that had started a seafood company downtown, just two blocks from the beach. He offered me a job and I accepted. Five days a week, an hour or so before sunset, I’d ride my bike a mile to Stearn’s Wharf, where another employee of the company sat waiting for me in the cab of a flatbed truck. Then the fishing boat would arrive and we’d lower a winched cable to the deck below. The fishermen would hook the cable to large wooden boxes containing their catch and we’d hoist them up. After the truck was fully loaded, we went two blocks to the seafood plant, emptied the boxes and hosed down the fish, then repacked them, only this time between layers of shaved ice. In the wee hours of the morning, my colleague drove down to Chinatown in Los Angeles, there to be greeted by lively and excited Chinese-Americans who clamored for the exceptionally fresh red snapper and ling cod.
Thanks to the company’s generosity, the tail of a fish stuck out of my backpack each night as I pedaled my way home. Dinner the next day would often consist of snapper or sole sautéed in olive oil with strips of red bell pepper, shallots, garlic, and a few sprigs of fresh oregano or thyme. I’d have a little wild rice on the side, topped with currants and chopped cilantro, all accompanied by a glass of nicely chilled white wine. The view outside my window was of the ocean and, in the far distance, several of the Santa Barbara Channel Islands.
I understand why some people would name Hawaii or the Caribbean as their choice of paradise. But Saint Barbara was, and always will be, the woman for me.
Before leaving Southern California in the early 80’s I put in some time on a worm farm in the Santa Inez Valley. Tucked between the coastal mountains just behind Santa Barbara, the valley was well known as the home of thoroughbred racehorse breeders and President Ronald Reagan’s ranch.
Worms had come to my attention shortly after I began gardening in earnest. Organic Gardening Magazine, other periodicals and some books I’d read, all praised the wizardry of worms in the garden. On an impulse one day, I reached for the Santa Inez yellow pages and searched for worm farms. There was a single listing. The farm was located just a few miles from my home.
I drove up a long driveway and parked in front of a modest ranch-style house. No one was in sight. I ambled towards the small garden a dozen yards away. Up close, it presented a strangely riveting sight. So enormous were all the vegetables growing there that they brought science fiction films to mind; stories in which radiation from nuclear fallout, or beams of light from the undersides of flying saucers, caused ordinary life on earth to mutate.
“That’s what happens when you add too many worm castings to the garden,” said the woman who had appeared from behind the house and was drawing nearer. “Everything gets too big.” Standing before me was a woman in her 60’s, with some of the clearest, most sparkling eyes I’ve ever looked into. Her name was Alicia. She had never married. She owned her home and had some savings put away, but liked to keep busy. Her petite stature and cloud-white hair belied an ability to work hard and productively for hours on end, as I later observed.
“Could you use a little help around here?” I asked. “I’d like to learn about worms.”
For what I thought might be the first and only time in my life, a woman looked at me as though I had a white steed beneath my rump, a suit of armor on my back, and a lance in my hand.
Rather quickly, all too quickly, Alicia’s dreamy expression departed and my wardrobe reverted to jeans and a T-shirt.
“My business partner, an older man, recently fell into poor health,” she said. “So I sure could use some help, but…I can’t pay you very much.”
I looked at her and waited a beat or two before saying, “That’s alright. I don’t need much money. I mostly want to see if worms can do everything the books I’ve read say they can.” I cast a glance at the garden before continuing. “Looks like those authors weren’t lying.”
Alicia gave me a slow, somewhat disbelieving smile. I was back on the horse, wearing that shiny armor again.
The Nevada Theatre in Nevada City, the oldest theatre in California. I did some acting there before leaving the town. (Notice the old gas lamps on the sidewalk)
Nevada City — Where I Lose a Fiancee and Find a Wife
One day in Santa Barbara I walked by a cottage close to the beach and noticed a 12-string guitar on the front porch. A young, beautiful woman with hair the color of pure silver came out to strum a bit. We got to talking, did a little singing together and then she showed me inside. Her paintings and drawings hanging on the walls were outstanding.
We eventually became engaged and moved to Eugene, Oregon, for a year. Then we moved down to northern California and settled in the historic mining town of Nevada City, 60 miles northeast of Sacramento, in the glorious Sierra foothills. I did a lot of freelance writing in those days, mostly for magazines and newspapers, some well known, others just little rags that quickly came and went.
Soon I got involved at Nevada City’s community radio station, KVMR. As many of you may know, call letters in the western U.S. begin with ‘K.’ The ‘VM’ stood for Victorian Museum, because, at that time, the station’s business offices and broadcast studio were in the wing of a museum dedicated to Victoriana. I read to blind and low-vision listeners
on-air and occasionally took a music shift. Tourists were constantly streaming in and out of the building— an old foundry where miner’s equipment had been manufactured in the late 19 th and early 20 th centuries. That was a very enjoyable time in my life. I befriended many creative and talented people at the station.
A little more than a year later, my fiancée told me she was leaving me for a woman she had met who worked for the radio station. I felt like I was in the cockpit of one of those WW I bi-planes (no pun intended) that was trailing smoke and spiraling towards earth. No matter how hard I pulled on the stick, I was still going down.
Putting in time at KVMR became extraordinarily difficult, as you might imagine. Once, while I sat in the lobby on a weekend, fighting back tears and not expecting to see many station personnel, my ex-fiancée and her lover strolled in. My ex- saw me and froze. But her lover walked over, got down on one knee, spread her arms wide, and musically proclaimed, ‘ Ta-daaah.’ The underlying message was clear.
In my imagination, I saw and heard myself telling a judge the whole story.
“And have you any remorse, Mr. Brotman?” the judge asked.
“Your honor, I do. I shouldn’t have shot and strangled her at the same time. That “was” a little over the top.”
The man in the black robe pondered for a few moments before pronouncing judgment and banging his gavel. “I disagree. Not guilty!”
I needed a long to time to recover from the end of that relationship (the great Neil Sedaka told us Breaking Up Is Hard To Do, didn’t he?). But, eventually, I came out of seclusion.
Several years later, in the early 90’s, while still in Nevada City, I met the woman I was destined to marry: A Ukrainian-Canadian from Québec. I’ve always been attracted to foreigners, and somehow I knew she wasn’t an American the first moment I saw her, before she even spoke a word. We started chatting, discussed our backgrounds and ancestries. I heard her give a Canadian pronunciation to ‘about’ (aboot). I told her I was Jewish and that my maternal grandmother was from Ukraine. My bride-to-be, who was raised in the Christian faith, had the trace of a smile on her otherwise serious face as she said, “I apologize for my ancestors having persecuted your ancestors.”
Guys may talk amongst themselves as to who has uttered the most outstanding line in a bar—or wherever—to break the ice and compel someone you’re interested in to instantly come around. But I’ve never heard any yet that topped “that” one.
—Eric Brotman
Topmost picture: Me at the audiobook publishing firm, circa 2000 (I’ve acquired a few more skin spots and lost a little more hair since then)
