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The Princess Marjorie M y mother saved things.

She had $50 bills hidden in an envelope beneath a stack of unread magazines in the cupboard of an old nightstand.

She had a small box of Kennedy half-dollars inside a small safe, underneath stacks of envelopes bound together with rubber bands. There were $50 bills inside some of the envelopes.

There were lacquered jewelry boxes and plain cardboard boxes filled with necklaces, rings, pendants and pins in dresser drawers beneath undergarments, old mail, pill bottles, pens and a lifetime of assembled ephemera. There were some valuable heirlooms mixed without distinction among trinkets from the many countries she had visited with her late husband. Photos taken by her husband were collected in box after box of incredibly boring slides which were viewed once or twice when friends came over, then stuffed into cupboards and never seen again. Marjorie and her husband did not seem to enjoy their travels as much as they enjoyed accumulating them to be admired and envied by their friends.

My mother was 15 years old in 1929, when the stock market crashed, followed by years of economic turmoil. But her parents were wealthy and the family was protected from ruin. She was a spoiled, only child who was smart and talented. She was a top student, played the piano and the violin, and pretty enough to be pursued by legions of young men, her friendship desired by admiring young women. She was a small-town princess whose photo routinely appeared in the society pages of the local paper.

So many in her small town had fallen into poverty during the aftermath of the Great Depression. So she saved. Everything.

By the time I was a teenager, her garage had turned into a museum of the useless and obsolete. She had saved all my father’s old electric shavers, though they didn’t work very well anymore. But they had value, somehow.

She saved cookie tins, so handy for storing things, even though she had more than twenty empty tins stuffed into a cupboard beneath her dead husband’s cluttered workbench. You never know when you might need one, she thought, and if she threw them away, in just a very few days she’d suddenly have a use for them, and then it would be too late.

After her electric garage door opener had to be replaced, she would not let the repairman take away the old, greasy, rusty, 12-foot-long mechanism. There might be parts in it that would come in handy some day.

The garage was packed full of stuff like that: old corroded sprinkler heads, scrap lumber stored in the rafters, old magazines, cardboard boxes that had come with her televisions, her coffee maker, her microwave. There were cracked plastic buckets filled with tattered kitchen dish towels and rags. Boxes of old calendars, coffee cans full of nails and screws and other mysterious, hard-to-identify parts saved by her late husband.

Inside her house every drawer was packed full. Many contained unopened mail, solicitations she meant to review, stacks of envelopes bound with rubber bands. She kept every greeting card she’d ever received, every letter, all the way back to when she was a little girl.

One might guess she was a sentimental person. But sentiment was barely in evidence as she accumulated her way through life. Sentiment was, at best, a fleeting afterthought, a momentary pause in the pursuit of acquisition. She never looked at the things she saved. Much of it was packed away in places too difficult to easily access. Each card and letter she saved was a kind of honorary award, bearing testament to her worth. They were her small trophies; homage paid to the princess.

I could go on and on, describing in great detail all the unused kitchen appliances, the unread books, the cabinets full of figurines, crystal, ceramics and silver – so many things only the privileged could afford to own, things that were never taken out of their places and handled, looked at or enjoyed.

But even in this small accounting, my writing becomes a repetition of the compulsions that surrounded me as a child, the compulsions that infused my soul, against which I have fought every day of my adult life.

Inside my mother’s garage, inside her drawers, in her closets and cupboards, in her attic, in every empty space, a lifetime of accumulation gathered randomly, while on the outside, her splendid home was neatly decorated, her most expensive possessions on display, touched only by the housekeeper who kept them dust-free.

My mother married a successful salesman, too young and sheltered to realize she’d fallen in love with a sales pitch, not a man. They were far from soul mates. She was Lady Di. He was Homer Simpson. She kept her husband at arm’s length as the years passed by, in his appropriate place, untouched, on his side of the bed. After a few years, she accumulated two children. First my sister, then I were adopted – an appropriate pair to show off at the country club.

As time went by, her husband and her children proved to be quite troublesome. Instead of showering her with praise, devotion and servitude, we actually required love and affection. Since she could not put each of us in a display case, she entombed herself within a display case of her own making. She became untouchable, permanent, unchanging, unwilling to share her carefully constructed and accumulated life. Yet we were relentlessly human and asked for more than she could give, and grew to resent her.

She came to realize she’d made a mistake. Life had been perfect when she was the only child, the small-town princess, admired by all she knew. She could never become the supplicant, required to make an earnest entreaty for love. She was superior and would never admit any kind of emotional need. And so she accumulated things and pre-empted any emotional connection by treating those around her with cruel contempt.

She was known in the community as a rich and respected woman who lived in a grand house full of splendid possessions. But she was utterly impoverished in spirit, without those intangible things which are our true possessions, which are the true measure of our lives.

This was my mother, the Princess Marjorie, sovereign of a vast wilderness. Notable People I Have Met ~ Part Five

Ralph Humphrey ~ virtuoso drummer

While not a familiar name among the general public, drummer Ralph Humphrey is famous among musicians. He’s known for playing with a long list of musical luminaries and just about every kind of gig and recording session imaginable. But when I played a few casuals with Ralph in 1975 and 1976, for me, his crowning glory was that he’d played with Frank Zappa, most notably as the only drummer on the 1973 Zappa album “Over-nite Sensation.” Ralph’s playing on “Over-nite Sensation” introduced a different kind of rhythmic sophistication to Zappa’s rock and jazz hybrid tunes, creating a sound of raw power precisely executed. Every musician I knew was listening to that breakthrough album.

The first gig I played with Ralph was at The Bistro in Beverly Hills, famous for its celebrity patrons. We played for a City Of Hope dinner for luminaries honored by the medical center’s foundation. I quickly realized I was in rarified air when I saw the parking lot. It was wall-to-wall Rolls Royce automobiles. On our first break, I peppered Ralph with questions about Zappa. I especially wanted to know if Zappa was sincere when he so often publicly stated he did not use drugs. His appearance and his wild musical mind, not to mention his bizarre lyrics, often gave people the impression that he must be high on something. But Ralph confirmed that Zappa did not use drugs. He was, in fact, an anti-drug advocate, although he did smoke cigarettes.

“I think if Frank ever really got high and took a good look at himself it would really freak him out,” Ralph said.

{The above quote is approximate, from my imperfect memory.}

I was a competent guitar player, but far from the A-list level that Humphrey belonged to. I asked Ralph how he rose to such a high level of musical proficiency. If there was some secret bit of wisdom, some path to greatness I’d overlooked, he would know about it. But Ralph said his musicianship was simply a result of a lot of study, practice and dedication. I suppose he was too modest to mention talent.

Check out his superb musicianship on the recently released "Roxy ~ The Movie," a CD and video compilation of Zappa performing over four nights in Hollywood at the Roxy in 1973. I was there—in the audience!

Click Here for "Roxy ~ The Movie" at Amazon


That evening led to another encounter with a famous celebrity--Johnny Carson. Someone said the lounge at The Bistro was a favorite spot for Johnny and Jack Lemmon who would meet there on occasion. A few hours after our gig began, we heard that Johnny was in the bar. To get to the restroom, bar patrons had to cut across a corner of the banquet room where we were playing. In the middle of a tune, we spotted Johnny making his way to the restroom. Without dropping a beat, the piano player broke into the theme song from “The Tonight Show.” Johnny looked over, pointed at us and laughed, quickly disappearing from the room.


~ Ralph Humphrey bio
 Notable People I Have Met — Part Three

Stan Wall ~ Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher

I’d never met a professional athlete before I met Los Angeles Dodgers rookie pitcher Stan Wall, a recent regular at the hotel lounge where I sang and played guitar with a small combo near the Los Angeles airport.

I’d also never met a Playboy model, but to meet Stan was to meet the amazing young woman who was often at his side, sitting around the semi-circular bar that fronted the elevated stage on which I performed. It was 1975, his first year in the majors, called up from a seven-year stint in the Dodgers' minor league system to take his shot. Stan was in the big leagues at last and was having a lot of fun on and off the field.

He was 24, I was 25 and we were both intrigued by each other’s professions.

We struck up a friendship, which led to:


There was a freestanding video game in the lobby of the International Hotel which I often played with the bass player on breaks between sets.

So I was experienced. One night after the band finished the last set, a rare night when Stan was alone, we ended up playing the video game together. These were the early days of video game technology. I cannot remember what the game was, only that it gave one the choice of playing against the computer or against another player. It was graphically crude, like the earliest Atari video games. Stan was ferociously competitive and doing pretty well for never having played this particular game. But my experience gave me an edge, and I began to dominate the competition.

“I can’t believe you’re this good!” he said in exasperation, shortly before I defeated him. It was about 3 a.m. and we were both exhausted.

We parted as friends, but it was a bittersweet experience. I felt a degree of pride for having beaten an accomplished athlete, and a little guilty for having shattered his confidence in a competition that was not evenly matched, given my many hours already spent mastering the intricacies of the game.

Days later I was watching the Dodgers on television, knowing there was a chance that Stan would be called in for relief pitching. I can’t remember what team they were playing against, but I do remember that Stan took the mound during the last few innings of the game with the bases loaded. I still shudder when I think of that pitch, the solid crack of the bat hitting the ball, that grand slam home run. I also remember Vin Scully commenting to co-announcer Jerry Doggett about how great the distance was between the minors and the majors, illustrated by Stan’s disastrous outing.

I blamed Dodger manager Walter Alston who put the young man into an incredibly difficult situation, difficult even for the most seasoned relief pitcher. But I could not help but wonder if my video game victory over Stan had somehow shaken his confidence. The night life we shared certainly didn’t help either. I felt a wave of guilt. Had I, in some small way, contributed toward his difficulties on the mound that day?

Yet Stan continued to play for the Dodgers, pitching ten games that year with a blistering 1.69 earned run average. He pitched a total sixty-six games with 55 strikeouts during his two years with the Dodgers before injury and happenstance sent him back to the minors in 1977. That was pretty much the end of his baseball career, but he went farther in those two years than I did during a dozen years as a working musician.

Unlike Stan, I never made it to the big leagues.
