More Early California Remembrances & Thoughts

I have more thoughts which came to me after leaving my last post. I'll leave them in random thought order as they come to me...My brother John used to have a friend of his named Gary Yoshino. I miss him and have become curious as to what has become of him. My brother only used to know hima nd talk to him back during the early days of my being in Santa Clara and before the move up to Eugene in 1970. He used to live towards Cupertino towards the Homestead Road area (if I'm recalling street names and areas correctly. I remember going to Gary's house a couple of times and having to climb up the steps to get to his front door. I also have remember the inside of his house and the sliding glass door area that led to his backyard. When I look back on him, I think it was really good for my brothers and myself to have been exposed to some diversity back in the '60s. I wish I could see him again because I have a fascination with people of Japanese ancestry. I tied to see if I could find him on Facebook. I found a Gary Yoshino. I e-mailed this person, but I never got an answer back. So, I'm pretty certain that this was not the Gary Yoshino I once knew. Gary, if you are out there, please say hello. I'd love to reconnect...Speaking of that area out near Cupertino, that's the area where my Mom would take me to get swimming lessons. I can still remember being in the station wagon with her on our way out and I would have the radio on while taking in some music. It seemed like everytime we would go out there, somebody would be playing Herb Albert & the Tiujuana Brass. Come to think of it, Mom bought me an album from them back then. Anyway, what I remember from the swimming lessons was that the swimming part and having to get used to putting my head underwater part wasn't very fun, but the phenomenon of being handled by a nice female instructor in the water was a new feeling. I quite enjoyed that...I can still see myself on the upstairs landing of the Franklin Street house and the day that my Mom spent quite a bit of time trying to get me to learn how to tie my shoes correctly. I drove her absolutely bananas. On top of it, when I finally did catch on, I developed a variation to tying my shoes which I still do to this day. My Mom was so fascinated by this development, she made sure that Father Mei (a dear family friend of ours from the University of Santa Clara) got a demonstration from me about how I tied my shoes. Father learned my technique and he was fascinated as well. Well hell, I was a screwball even back then...Franklin Street was where I had my first pets. I don't remember it, but my parents had a Beagle when I was still in the rug-rat stage and when I was starting my first attempts at standing up. According to my Mom, the damned dog used to love to come up and steal my cookies from out of my hand. He was supposed to have been pretty agressive that way. After too much stealing on the dog's part, Mom informed my Dad that the dog had to go. I was not to have a dog until I got my true first dog on Christmas Day 1969-my buddy Chainsaw...I did however, get along with a cat we had. His name was Sylvester. We got along because fine because of the fact that I was scared to death of his needle-like claws. Since I hated needles from all of the heart problems and doctor work being done on me, I wasn't getting anywhere near those claws of his. When I did have occasion to actually pet him, I always petted him from behind and never too far up front of his back and his face. I just didn't want to risk getting nailed. But basically, he was a pretty good guy. We inherited him from some neighbors who had to move out of state. Slyvester had a major run-in with a Mockingbird who took to dive-bombing him every chance it had to make life miserable for the poor cat. Sylvester finally couldn't take it anymore and decided he needed to get some revenge. He took to climbing up into a small tree we had in the backyard (I can't remember what kind of tree it was) where he would wait for long periods of time before he would give up. He would then go back up at other times and wait a long time. Finally, the right day arrived and everything fell into place for him. He got up into the tree and waited very patiently. The Mockingbird made a landing into the tree not knowing that he had company. Slyvester waited for the right time and then he pounced on the bird and finished him off for good...The Franklin Street house was a really cool old house, but there was one part of the downstairs I never really liked. In front of the bathroom downstairs that I used to use frequently (and was next to my Grandfather's room), there was metal/steel (?) grate that must have been where some house heat must have come through that I hated to walk on for some reason. I grew to tolerate it, but I never cared for it. I was always worried that I'd fall in it or trip over it in some screwball fashion...I was always around older people. I've always been endeared to maturity. I still consider maturity to be an incredibly important factor in choosing friends and also in wishing I could choose women...My first friend was my next door neighbor Tommy. We are still friends to this day. Tommy must be about 5 or 6 years younger than I am. I had a late start on having friends who were kids like me because of all of the heart stuff I went through...I used to hang out on the top part of the barbecue grill made out of brick outside and look into Tommy's yard when he was taking a nap or when he was gone. I spent a lot of quality time up on top of that thing. Sometimes Mrs. Rudd would see me up there and tell me if it was o.k. to come over to see Tommy and his brother Jeff or not... Nancy Rudd is a special person. Whenever I was over and Tommy happened to be taking an afternoon nap, she would let me go in front of her stereo console she had in the living room where she would play her Ray Charles and Nat King Cole records for me. Whenever I hear Brother Ray, I always think of her. Her husband, Bob, is a fantastic person as well. He used to play in the PCL back in the '50s...I will always identify my dear friends, The Rudds, with the two vehicles they owned. They had a Volkswagen Bug and a green Chevy truck...Across the street from the Franklin Street house was my Dad's place of business. He owned the Santa Clara Sports Shop. He fitted people like Dan Pastorini and Dennis Awtrey with with tennis shoes. He was the best tennis racquet stringer in the Santa Clara Valley. He probably single handedly gave Converse a huge lift by the number of their shoes he sold in the store. He once had Mickey Dolenz of The Monkees as a customer in the store. He knew when the La Cosa Nostra guys were coming in to buy handguns. They would buy more than one and they always paid for them with cash and then he'd let the late Frank Sapena (the Police Chief) know about it. I will always remember that store for the two bears and the wolf mounts out in the front of the store that were donated to the store for viewing purposes by Chick Karahawa (I think that is how his name was spelled). I can still remember Mom pressing up uniforms and numbers for the Santa Clara Westside Little League teams upstairs. I can still see my Grandfather and my Uncle George bullshitting their way through an afternoon in the two chairs that were in front a of Levi's jeans bin we had that up near a pillar...I still remember a horrible auto wreck in front of the store one day and all of the glass that was everywhere...Back at home, we had fish tanks in our television room. In one of the tanks, we had black bass in it. One of my Dad's favorite things to do was to bring unsuspecting people over to the house for a little bit of fun at their expense. He'd open the tank up at the top and he'd say for them to stick their finger into the water and then one of the bass would try to bite their fingers...We had a parakeet that we all loved very much. His name was Pete. We'd leave the cage door open during the daytime and he would occasionally take a quick flight around the television room and go right back into his cage. Then, we would close his door for the night and put the cage cover on over him so that he'd have some nice rest...When I think of that t.v. room, I think back on all of the Looney Tunes, Popeye and Hanna-Barbera cartoons I watched there as wellas, Godzilla movies, Ultraman, The Green Hornet, Batman and Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In. I also used to watch the Jackie Gleason Show quite a bit...Probably the most innocent thing that ever happened to me when I was at the Franklin Street house and the most telling of the kind of kid I was occurred the day that I noticed that I was taking pity on both of brother's pet horned toads (lizards) they had in a dry aquarium. I said to myself, "Man! That has got be a pretty cramped thing living in there." So, I decided they could use some exercise. I grabbed them out of their aquarium so that they could stretch their legs out. I took them way out towards the back garage area where there was white concrete laid out and right next door to a neighbor's house. I was hanging out there with them and watching over them when something hit me. I had this sudden urge to have to go pee. So, me and my trust I placed in animals at this young stage of my life, I told the horned toads to just stay put and that I'd be right back because I had to go to the bathroom. I got done going to the bathroom and I felt much better. When I returned to the place where I had set them down, they were nowhere in sight. I looked for them everywhere. They really let me down. Although I felt pretty good after having taken that piss, I didn't feel so good knowing that I lost both of my brother's horned toads. After all of these years of jealousy among them towards me, I sometimes wonder if the roots of some of that jealousy goes back to when I lost those horned toads?...One of the greatest musical moments occurred at an Altar Boy Picnic in what have must have been 1969. In the area over by the pool at this place we used to have to travel to every year (in May-If I'm recalling correctly), I witnessed the galvanizing eeeffcts of what music can do in bring people together. There was ajukebox next to the swimming pool there. From a distance, I saw my brother drop some money into the slot and then my brother John and George Migliaccio led the whole camp in singing along to "Hey Jude" from The Beatles. That moment has stayed with me always...I remember my oldest brother (John) playing his CCR records in his bedroom. There were actually times when he let me listen to them with him...I also remember the time when John and I were hanging out on his bed and listening to a transistor radio while listening to a report of the coming breakup of The Beatles. I can still see my brother looking over at me and saying "Paul is a baby." Little did any of us know that Paul was the one who was right in seeing that Allen Klein was ripping off the band and that it was John, George and Ringo who were making the wrong move when it came to Klein. They should have listened to Paul and got the Eastman firm to take on Klein for all four of them...There are more memories I can recall, but I have run out of time for now. I will tell more Franklin Street stories later.