Canoga Park

 

 

Being 14 years old was great for me. It was the first year after my Dad's death which meant I could do any goddamn thing I wanted, and I did mostly without getting caught. It also was the first year of hitting puberty but that's not what we're here for, but you get the point. A host of all sorts of new discoveries open up for you. So, being 14 for me was like standing up the entire time on a roller coaster ride, hanging onto the safety bar for dear life.

This must have happened to you countless times. You meet someone for a few weeks and they make an impression on you. Then, as quickly as they showed up, they flew away, never to be seen again. I had that experience with a 14 year old kid who was from California.

His name was Tim. The first time we had seen him, he had walked down our street and stopped to talk to us which was weird to begin with. No stranger just stops to talk to you in New England and if they do, your suspicion is greatly aroused. “What...Do you want from me?” is forefront in your mind. But he being a Californian, it's totally natural to do so but we didn't know they were like that.

Tim looked different too and I couldn't put my finger on it till I was much older. We New England kids, especially the boys, dressed with whatever it was our parents could afford. In the late 70's it was a lot of tee shirts or flannel shirts for the winter and the ubiquitous jeans and sneakers. That didn't change too much over time. And there was no attention paid to whether any of what we were wearing “clashed.” Our hair then was longish and not always “kept.” We were sort of sloppy looking. The girls of our neighborhood were constrained by their parent's budget but did a much better job at looking presentable...except for a few who were accursed gutter slop muppets, never to be salvaged from their sad state. There was Rose Mary, a missing front-toothed, malevolent as hell bitch who, if she threatened to beat your ass, you had to sit up and took notice.

Tim just looked...”right...” all the time. I found out why so much later. He was a Californian and they tend to be a bit shallow when it comes to their “look.” They spend more time than most getting it accurate. His hair was styled after Barry Gibb and neat. His jeans were spotless, ironed and creased. Any shirt he wore was ironed as well. His sneakers were impeccable, as if they were new, perpetually new. Our sneakers looked like shit. Our Keds were stained, torn, falling apart or some awful color no one should purchase, like puke green. Hell, the sneakers under my desk right now are ratty as shit. Some things never change!

On top of that Tim was fully tan in June. None of us Irish or Polish kids ever gained a tan till late August. We burned, turned red, peeled then got slightly darker. Tim on the other hand “worked” on his tan and should've been in an ad for Hawaiian Tropic, the Golden Boy. I don't think any of us ever laid out in the sun to “work” on it but he would. If we tanned, it was an accidental tee shirt tan.

Then, anything that came from California was “with it” and cool, or so we East kids felt. Any fad or style that came to us, first came from LA. This was the 70s! Everything prior to 1980 was better! Sex didn't kill you because there was no AIDS, cocaine wasn't so pure as to cause addiction and skin cancer was pretty much unheard of. Being lily white in California was sooo uncool then. When it came to us, we tried but northern European genetics won't allow tans.

Tim made his way into our group fairly easily because we took a liking to him. His natural friendliness we found out was authentic (After our New England-y natural frostiness warmed after we found he didn't “want” anything from us) and he seemed fun to be around with.

So what the hell was he doing in...Pawtucket?

He told us that his Dad was a salesman for a large company and that he lived in Braintree but was staying with his grandmother a few streets over for a while.

Where was his Mom we asked.

“Oh, my parents are getting divorced, so I get to live on both coasts if I want too.”

That really struck me as I had NEVER met anyone whose parents were divorced. We all have heard of it but never met anyone going through or living it. Around here at the time, marrieds stayed together, even if there were weekly scream fests we all could hear a street away. None of the kids I knew at school had divorced parents either. It would take a few more years before our little world learned the phrase, “irreconcilable differences” and what a boon that was to marrieds who wanted nothing but OUT.

“Where are you from..where were you born?” J asked.

“Canoga Park...” Tim says

And...we just stare clueless.....Duuuuuuhhhh...What's a Canoga Park?

“Canoga Park...Ya know...The Valley?” 

We all looked dopey to him when he finally says loudly...

”LOS ANGELES!”

“Oh yeah, that...Yeah, We know it” we all chimed in, finally getting it but that lead still gave us no idea to where Canoga Park was.

**

One time, he and I were sitting on the curb near J.s house behind me, because it's summer and there's nothing to do but waste time when he asks me:

“You know anyone who has 'ludes?”

“Ludes?” I say.

“Yeah, ya know, mandrakes, 714's, lemons...”

I have no clue.

“You have no idea what they are do you?” he says.

So I, being a 14 year old boy and having to seem as worldly as he is say,

“I know! I know! It's just that it's dry here now for them!” It was total bullshit. I hadn't the slightest idea what they were.

Later on that night, I ask my older brother, who was at Providence College at the time, what a lude was.

He turns around and with a shit eating grin and almost accusingly asks:

“Why...do YOU want to know what a lude is?”

So I tell him Tim was asking for them.

He had met and known Tim from seeing him with our gang and figured it out.

“He's from Los Angeles right? Quaaludes are like Tic Tacs there. They're legal and wicked popular.” He had seen some around his college but they weren't as popular as cocaine was. Quaaludes were so well liked because there was no real damage from doing them daily. They were invented as a kick ass sleeping pill. If you could get past the first 30 mins of drowsiness and stay awake the euphoria you felt after was great.

I, and our gang, knew Tim was just 14, but as we got to know him we realized he was older than that. He was far more grown up than we first thought.

And I and the gang, were getting jealous.

All kids want to seem more grown up than they are. We were no exception. We bragged to one another about our worldly knowledge, things we never did but claimed to have. It was typical teen boy posturing. But, Tim was doing it, living it. He was real.

I remember the feeling I started to have. I knew I had deficits in seeming cool, successful and such. Compared to him, I was lagging and I wanted to catch up.  Being a young teen, I had no idea on how to improve it except for one.

I suspected Tim of having SECRET KNOWLEDGE and I wanted that. I wasn't alone apparently, others began to desire that too. What secret knowledge? Looking back on it, it was just plain confidence and probably growing up way too fast for his years. He just had more experience than we possessed. We looked up to that and very much desired to know what he knew. 

And did I ever want to know what he knew. You couldn't just ask him, that would come out as sooo dweebish raised to the nth power. So you do what all kids do, watch and emulate as best as you can.

In this neighborhood, we were strip mall-rat kids. The plaza on Armistice Blvd. was our Sherman Oaks Galleria. We just hung out there like our older sisters and brothers would. One of the stores we hung out in was a CVS. Usually the first week of the month because the new magazines came in and we would read them, but never buy them. Why do that?

So one day Tim comes along with us to CVS and as we enter, I see Nicole S. and a couple of her friends down the girl's beauty aisle.

Nicole...was born fairly pretty and between 13 to 14, sprouted these big Hollywood tits in a damn hurry. We boys were sort of amazed by her. She seemed soo much older than us but she wasn't. I think we all tried to talk to her but being that young, we knew jack shit about girls. If anything, any talk we had with her degenerated into talking to the other boys around and trying to seem as tough as we could. Again, more posturing. It's no wonder you girls couldn't figure boys out because we were horrible at talking to you! What can you learn if you see a boy put another boy in a headlock in a CVS? He's signaling to you about how strong he is but you didn't know that! All you wanted to know was what he's really like on the inside.

Tim's ahead of us as we enter the CVS and he sees the girls and stops as bit. He then goes over to a frisbee display and grabs one, and waiting till their gaze was elsewhere.....then lightly flies it down the aisle till it sort of bounced off Nicole's arm. As it he let it go he followed it quickly down the aisle. In a few seconds he was with them.

“Oh hey! I'm sorry! I wanted to see how this frisbee was...I didn't hurt you right?” says Tim.

Nicole and the girls were taken by surprise.

“I'm Timmy....I live on Liberty St...I used to live in California! Hi!”

Nicole immediately starts talking to him and she and Tim have an easy banter going back and forth. As he is talking, I see him touch her arm and compliment her tan. Tim says something else and Nicole is laughing.

I stood there, watching this and all I thought was:

“How..the FUCK...was he ABLE...to do THAT!??”

My jealousy scale ran off scale high. I mean it's pegged all the way up. I bet my mouth was half open in amazement too. What he just did, was magic to me.

I probably had that thought again, “He DOES have secret knowledge!! I knew it!!” The other thought I knew was this...”Oh PLEASE! Tell me! Tell me! Tell me! How you did that!!!”

So after few, he leaves the girls and returns to us.

We boys were silent. We just saw a Jedi Mind Trick Nicole was unaware of the whole time.

“These aren't the droids you're looking for...” (waves hand)

“These aren't the droids we're looking for...”

Or what it looked like to us young teen boys.

Tim: “You'll slide your jeans off...” (waves frisbee)

Nicole:  (Eyes all hypnotic n stuff) “I will slide my jeans off...”

In seconds, he got her attention, talked to her, managed to leave a good impression then leave her like he didn't care about her at all.

I know our boy brains were flat lining the whole time we looked at Tim. “What did we just see? How is it possible?”

Since I couldn't ask him how...that again would seem desperate, I resolved to be with him when we were near girls and I'd go with him if he hit any up, or just plain talked to them. My radar was on HIGH adsorbing anything..anything at all. I WILL get this secret knowledge!

**

Weeks later, Tim stopped coming around. We didn't give it much mind till one of us spoke up about it. We then all went to his Grandmother's house to get him.

“Timmy's gone home to his Mom's...to California.” she told us.

I think we were all let down by that news. He was cool. We were a bit miffed he hadn't said a word about that but that was his lifestyle, moving here and there. It was nothing to him. We never saw him again.

**

Twenty-five years later, I was working at a place in Pawtuxet Village and I had walked down the hall and saw a group of three women and one who was pretty cute. I reached into my pocket, took out my car keys and flung them down the hall. They slid all the way to her feet. As I walked up to her I said, “Ugh! I'll lose these things if I'm not more careful...I'm Ron by the way, you new? You just start here...?”

Thanks Timmy!