Oh, Beautiful: An American Family in the 20th Century (53 page)

The working-class immigrant families were playing out the classic American drama. Their resilience and teamwork in building stronger communities in the beleaguered flatlands beneath the Hollywood sign, that national shrine to vanity and fame, posed a stark contrast between what America meant to different people and, in many cases, to different generations. It occurred to me that America would cease to be America without a regular infusion of these kinds of stalwart, tight-knit immigrant communities.

12. Divorce Court

Joe realized at an early age that he had to strike out on his own. Unlike his brothers and sisters, he never felt like a good musician. He plunked away at the piano keys, but maybe his fingers were too big. He liked sports a lot more. Sadly, from his perspective, sports was not the family priority. No matter how much we rooted for him from the sidelines, Joe knew that the money was not there for sports like it was for music.

He went in search of a league of his own. In second grade, he walked home each day from the Catholic school at the top of the hill, stripped off his school uniform, put on his play clothes, sneaked through the Jersins’ yard next door, and crossed the street to the public school at the bottom of the hill. There, the department of recreation for the city of Redondo Beach sponsored a bounty of free after-school programs. Flag football. Basketball. Over-the-line baseball, which needed just two people to play on each team.

Joe made a pack of friends at the public school, all of whom stuck together through the summer. They biked to the beach in the mornings, bodysurfed and rode surf mats until midday, biked home for lunches, and then regrouped in the afternoons to pedal to Sea-Air Golf Course, a nine-hole, pitch-and-putt course owned and operated by the city of Torrance. The city loaned the kids their clubs and balls for the “unbelievably cheap sum” of 20 cents a day, Joe reminisced. “Thank God for the city of Torrance.”

In third grade, Joe bargained with Mom and Dad to sign him up for Little League baseball. “It’s only $20,” the nine-year-old begged. “If you pay, I’ll buy the equipment.”

Deal. He earned his allowances by raking the leaves and mowing the lawn. He shopped in catalogues and rode his bike for eight miles to buy a MacGregor glove, a wooden Adirondack bat, and a pair of Adidas cleats.

The Little League coaches asked him to start playing at first base, because he was kind of a fat little guy, and the first baseman never had to run much. As he gradually slimmed down, the coaches assigned him to third base. Then second base. Then shortstop. Then the outfield. And then there was no stopping him.

For hours on end, he threw a baseball at a spot on the retaining wall in our back yard. The spot was nothing but a slightly different shade of cement on the wall at the edge of our property. If he hit the spot, the ball bounced back along the patio, and he could throw the ball again. If he missed the spot, the ball often flew into the ivy above, and “it was a pain in the ass to dig it out.”

He did the same thing with a different spot on a wall at the playground at the bottom of the hill. When the after-school programs ended each day, he started throwing a ball against the wall. He threw the ball until dinner. He never missed dinner, but then he returned to the wall as soon as he finished eating, especially during summer when he could make the most of daylight. He was usually the last kid on the playground.

As darkness fell, the groundskeepers looked the other way, locked the gates, and went home, knowing that Joe could climb over the chain-link fence. He kept throwing the ball until his arm was so tired that he had no choice but to quit. Each day, his arm grew a little stronger, and he threw the ball a little longer.

No coach had ever made him do that. He wasn’t trying to escape anything at home. The activity wasn’t drudgery. “I enjoyed it,” he recalled. “I was practicing for the games.” He knew that if he had to throw the ball to first base, he’d have to throw it straight.

In Little League, he improved his game by watching the best players, studying their moves, and imitating them. He focused less on his teammates than on the really good players on the other teams. He tried to figure out their game plans. “By analyzing the strategies of the other teams, I learned what I needed to do to beat them.”

He formed strong opinions about the coaches, who were all volunteer dads. Some of them were “just plain stupid,” he remembered. They didn’t know a thing about baseball except where to stick the fat kid. Others were friendly and fatherly, but “they didn’t know what they were talking about, either.” Still others were downright “inappropriate,” bent on having their sons succeed where they themselves had failed.

“
I learned more about adults than about kids” in Little League, said Joe. He learned that some adults deserved respect, and some didn’t.

Most of the Little League coaches lost their credibility with Joe. “Only a few were good coaches, but they usually coached the other teams.” He noticed that the best players typically had the best coaches. He longed for the attention of a good coach.

For junior high, Joe persuaded Mom and Dad to let him transfer from the Catholic school to the public school in 1969, because the public school mandated that every student take a physical education class every day. “That was the cat’s meow!” said Joe.

He blazed through the sports of junior high and high school with his old pals from the after-school programs. In the eighth grade, he was named athlete of the year. In high school, he overcame his juvenile rheumatoid arthritis, or “water on the knee,” by running cross-country. The long runs replaced much of the residual fat on his legs with muscles, relieving the pressure on the knees. He grew into a confident, strapping young man.

He thrived on the camaraderie of his high school baseball team, but he still longed for a good coach. The high school coaches, like the Little League coaches, “didn’t really coach,” said Joe. They didn’t teach him how to become a better player. They talked a lot about teamwork and building character, and they kept the kids off the streets and out of trouble. But Joe wanted someone to show him the fundamentals of the game. “It never impressed me to just hear people talking.”

He taught himself how to improve his baseball game by reading the sports page every day and watching the pros on the weekends. The east coast games in the mornings. The west coast games in the afternoons. His favorite player was Brooks Robinson, third baseman for the Baltimore Orioles. “He wasn’t great at any one skill,” said Joe, “but he was a good all-around player who worked hard. I chose his number 5 for my jersey.”

In his senior year, Joe and his pals won the league championship in baseball, but he nevertheless felt profoundly alone. His participation in team sports ironically left him with the impression that he was largely responsible for his own victories and defeats, that few people could really help him to improve, and that most adults had little of value to say. The impression took on spiritual overtones.

At home not long after having won the league championship, he lay himself flat on his back on the coiled rug on the hardwood floor in the playroom. He positioned his ears between the two stereo speakers, and he pondered the contemplative lyrics of the 1974 Jackson Browne album,
Late for the Sky
. Browne posed the eternal questions and proposed answers that Joe found to be undeniable in their common sense. Joe shut his eyes and reflected on the words from “For a Dancer”:

Joe knew the rules of the game when he finished high school in 1975. Dad would pay everything for a Jesuit college but nothing for a non-Jesuit college. Joe wanted to pursue a degree in a field called Leisure Sciences and Recreation Activities, which was the study of how to make the most of free time. His goal was to run a city recreation department and to play with the kids on the playground for the rest of his life. It wasn’t his fault that Loyola Marymount University didn’t offer a diploma in leisure sciences.

The only two local schools that did were Cal State Dominguez Hills, a public school in Carson, and Pepperdine University, a Protestant school in Malibu. Pepperdine offered Joe a scholarship, but it covered only half the tuition.

“
Pepperdine is the superior school academically,” Dad coached Joe, huddling with him beside his waterbed. Dad also believed that Pepperdine was the least of three potential evils: no college at all, a pagan public college, or a Protestant college. But Dad didn’t want to set a dangerous precedent. So he proposed a compromise that would make it possible, though not easy, for Joe to attend the Protestant school. “I’m willing to split the cost with you of the remaining half of the tuition at Pepperdine. But you’ll have to pay your own living expenses. If you want to live at home, you’re welcome to stay here for free. But if you choose to live somewhere else, you’ll have to pay your own rent.”

With the scholarship from Pepperdine plus Dad’s offer, the Protestant school became just as affordable to Joe as the public school. His future suddenly came down to a choice between ordinary Carson or spectacular Malibu.

He chose Malibu.

He devised a clever strategy to keep his tuition costs down. Each semester, he enrolled in a full load of four courses—or sixteen units—triggering his scholarship for eight units. With the scholarship money in the bank, he then dropped one course and avoided paying for its four units. Instead, he took his general education requirements at cut-rate public universities during the summers and transferred the credits to Pepperdine.

“
That was sneaky,” he admitted in hindsight. He gamed the system, and he won.

He formulated another winning strategy to cover his living expenses. He worked weekends as a city of Redondo Beach referee and night shifts at the Malibu Emergency Center as an emergency medical technician (EMT). He scheduled his three night shifts and all his Pepperdine classes on three consecutive days—Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday—so that he could spend all of his Malibu nights at the clinic, sleeping about six hours during a typical fourteen-hour shift. Instead of paying to sleep in Malibu, he was being paid to sleep in Malibu. He then cruised home down the coast for his four-day weekends. He was quickly mastering the art of leisure sciences.

If he needed to stay overnight in Malibu when he wasn’t working at the clinic, he set up camp in his no-frills 1976 blue Dodge van in the campus parking lot near the gymnasium. He upholstered the van with foam rubber and shag carpeting to give himself a cushy mattress. The campground supplied everything he needed and more: free lodging, free parking, free showers at the gym, a nice place to workout, and a sweeping panoramic ocean vista spreading out before him. A van with a view.

The less he owned, the freer he felt. Although he worked two jobs to support himself, he wanted nothing to do with any kind of consuming quest for money.

When he began a third job, it reinforced his asceticism. He worked in Santa Monica as an EMT at the Pritikin Longevity Center, an oceanfront rehabilitation facility for people recovering from heart attacks or bypass surgeries. The people resided at the facility for about a month to learn how to eat healthy food and how to exercise regularly. Many of the people had worked nonstop for 30 to 40 years until they suddenly collapsed. They were extremely successful financially, but they often became reflective during their time at the beach, looking death squarely in the face. They wondered if their decades of diligence had been worthwhile. They confided in Joe as he monitored their heart rates.

“
Young man, I’ve done everything society has expected of me, and I’m not too happy about it,” huffed one patient on a treadmill.

“
I can’t say if I’d do it all over again, either,” puffed another.

Joe began to wonder: “Why do Americans work so hard for so long and then wait until age 65 to retire when they’re burned out and can’t do anything anymore anyway?” That wasn’t what life was all about. Other cultures, like those in Europe and Australia, seemed to be oriented more toward the leisure sciences.

His ruminations ran the gamut from the practical to the philosophical. On the practical side, he began toying with the idea of what he called “intermittent retirement.” Intermittent retirement meant taking leave from work for a few months now and then for leisure activities like skiing, canoeing, or hiking. He realized, however, that a career in leisure sciences wouldn’t pay enough for intermittent retirement. On the philosophical side, he detected a void in his life that no free time could fill. He could outsmart universities. He could finagle free rent in high-rent districts. He could work three jobs and excel in school at the same time. Yet none of these feats, he believed, leant his life great meaning. He felt he was chugging along on a treadmill just like his overworked patients. He wondered if he could someday give his time to others in meaningful ways.

Joe needed a whole new life strategy. Torn as to which path to take, he consulted one of the few adults who had impressed him as having something of value to say: Father Ferraro, our parish priest. Joe admired Father Ferraro as someone who had used his time and talents to serve others and to leave a lasting legacy on the community.