Smiley’s Dice on the Road

THE Throw of the dice this week is on the road.

Scenery racing by at 60 mph, on a two lane highway, saddled between fresh morning pastures, and broken down double-wides. A New Mexican patchwork of serenity and simplicity. On Highway 84 out of Santa Fe, we pass through the one-blink town of Chama. During the summer tourists flock here to ride the Tupeltec Train through the mountains and fish in the Rio Grande.  The window sign of the coffee house advertises Espresso, but the paint is worn thin, and the letters breaking up. The sidewalk flower pots are filled with cigarette butts, and the newspaper stands are empty. There is an old fashioned gas station, closed for the winter, and just beyond are the train tracks, and a stationary train. That’s where I got the idea of living on a train. I could settle down in a train, like Jim West in the television program from the sixties, The Wild Wild West. Movement is what gives me comfort. Some of us just cannot sit still. We try to cushion ourselves in with big windows and heaps of scenery: fireplaces, and fresh flowers, music, books, and home theater.  What lies beyond home organization is a world of surprises and that’s what we keep reaching for.

Outside of Chama the road grows narrower, and signs of life diminish with the exception of the crows, and the solitary underfed horse staring at a fence, looking like the loneliest creature on the face of the earth. The scenery transforms into a sketch of poetry as the sky suddenly turns white, and the hillsides are caked in snow frosting.  We were on our way to Pagaosa Springs; a small town just across the continental divide into Colorado. The Springs Spa & Salon boasts of having European fashioned mineral springs.

 “That’s it?” SC asked. 

 “Yes, I guess so. What’s it doing IN A PARKING LOT? The website made it look like we were in the mountains.”

“ Good marketing.” He said.

“ Oh no, this is awful.” I snapped.  But I caught myself. You know how words come back at you with meaning, and you have to adjust yourself. I looked the place over and thought, I’ll make this an adventure. I will not complain or snub my nose because I’m here, in the cup of Colorado and it’s beautiful. 

“ The springs are public?” SC denounced.

I looked over at the three-tiered sculpted hillside; pools of water connected by walkways, waterfalls, and this wake of steam rising. It was the lusciousness of a European spa, except, the bather’s were beer-bellied rednecks and saloon sloppy women, wearing stretched out bathing suits that hung from their skin. Children were running back and forth, and Soaring Crow didn’t look too happy.  

“ I’m not going into those baths.” He snapped. 

“ The hotel has its own private area; it will be better.”

“ It’s like getting into a bathtub with a bunch of strangers.”

“ Well, I’ll throw some bleach in before. ” 

We headed into the reception area of the Springs Spa & Salon. A man dressed in Spa-white was gnawing on a chewy nutrition bar. Before he finished swallowing, he said, “ What I do for yer folks?”  

He leaned over the counter and chewed, while SC explained we were checking into the Spa. The Spa smelled of chlorine, and I started to laugh.  What I had imagined, was the Sonoma Mission Inn, or Roosevelt Spa in Saratoga Springs.

“I can’t wait to see the room.”  I said.

There are two types of getaways; first class and adventurous, this was less than adventurous, it was shoddy. We unloaded and went for a drive through town. The shop with the Antiques sign drew us in first. It smelled like acerbic spring water was oozing out of the walls. I looked around; drawing my breath in, to avoid a dust storm. Cowboy mugs, saddles, fiesta flatware, mantelpiece trinkets and dusty smudged books were stacked on shabby boxes and wooden carts. Not much to capture the eye, except the saleswoman. She was built like an old door. I imagined she was young once, and had a softer edge, now she moved in wooden strides, and her eyes were plucked of sentimentality. Maybe she came from a mining family, and they were hardened at an early age. I imagined what she was thinking of me. It sort of slipped out when I opened the door. She hadn’t expected me to say thank you, and when she met my eyes, hers were raising heck with my attire.  Outside, the snow continued to dust the town with a bit of whitened cleanliness.

“ Where are we eating tonight.” SC asked.

“ Oh I found a place that sounds interesting, The Old Miner’s Lodge.”

“ It sounds like we should drive by first.”

We drove down the main road, and I looked through the dining guide. The short list was the kind you’d expect in an old mining town, that Robert Redford hadn’t discovered.

“ It’s a steakhouse with a salad bar.” I assured SC.

“ Let’s find something else. I don’t want to bathe and eat with the same people.” 

“There isn’t anything else but what the receptionist suggested, Eddie’s Grill, it’s her favorite place.”

“ Because her father-in-law, or half-sister owns it.” 

We went looking for Eddie’s and along the way I noticed a sign for Keyah Grande. It was the kind of sign that eluded, exclusive, so I suggested we drive up. Outside a large menacing iron gate, we rang the digital keyboard and the Chef answered the phone. He said to come up. We passed through the gate and slowly eased the car up an unpaved road, and entered what looked like safari country. There were elk and deer wandering inside gated pastures, fat and sleek-coated, without visible fear or alarm, they just seemed to nod at us.

We drove past a sign for horses, and I thought, I’d wished we stayed here. At the top of the mountain, a plateau surfaced and a two story Spanish colonial building jolted out of the ground. We were surrounded by mountains, three cars, and a clubhouse attached to a suspended deck that looked like the wing of an airplane. SC immediately dashed for the edge. I lingered back closer to center. We were raised to new euphoric vistas, set above the San Juan Mountains with streaks of snow edged between pine trees and shafts of light. A cold breeze that John Cage would have recorded brushed through the trees.

We went inside the hotel and discovered a palatial home-museum. A woman greeted us.

“ Hi com’on in. We’re just taking these folks through the rooms; would you like to join us.”

“Yes,” SC said.

“ No.” I answered, and whispered to SC,“I’m still catching my breath.    

We followed another young friendly woman to the cocktail lounge. It was the sort of place you’d curl your legs under and hold the glass as if you owned the house. Darkened cherry-wood paneling and leather wrapped a room with built-in everything, and made it feel gracefully masculine. We sat on the sofa sipping wine and forgot about Pagosa Springs.   

   “Can we have dinner here tonight?” I asked without willing to accept anything less. 

  “You bet we can. I’m not leaving until they throw me out.”

  “Will you be joining us for dinner?” The cocktail waitress asked.

 “Yes, we’d love to.” 

 “I’ll show you the dining room.”

 “How many rooms are there in the hotel?” I asked.

“ We call it a guest house. There are eight rooms.”

“ Are they all booked?” I asked.

“ I’d have to check; we may have one.”

  SC looked at me expectantly.

“ First I’ll show you the dining room,” and she took us through the main parlor, a salon of European taste dignified with a gold trimmed piano, original oil paintings, tapestries, and enough natural light to take a sunbath. 

“ How many acres go with the guest house?” I asked.

“ Four thousand.”

“ Eight rooms and four thousand acres.” I repeated. That makes some kind of statement. 

We found out the rooms were $500.00 a night and it was better to go with the package deal; $800.00 including all meals. It reminded me of what I read in the WSJ; about executive holidays, and the kind of money that passes from one pocket to the next.

 After a peek at the menu, and finding the prices comparable to any fine dining, we finished our wine, and drifted outside like two beggars who’d just found a gracious host. We decided to go back to Pagosa and shower.

“ I can’t wait to go back and use the scratchy towels and cheap soap.”

 “It’s more fun this way, it’s an adventure.” I said. The funny thing is; I wasn’t fibbing or pretending. The adventure in me felt atrophied and I was thankful I was out of town and on the road. Even if it was a tiny stiff room without mints on the pillow, I knew we’d be laughing ourselves to sleep. To be continued.  Any dice to throw: Email: folliesls@aol.com  

 

I plucked it out just recently to give my courage.

Good to seet that I am not alone in feeling it is time to shake hands with Steinbeck’s,  Grapes of Wrath once again.

Today it may be renamed,   The wrath of wealth

LOST ANGELES PART 2

The throw of the dice this week lands on the continuation of last weeks, adventures in moving again.

I’d just walked into Jack Taylor’s haberdashery. Jack was looking at me from behind his big signature black eye-glass frames; one of the largest frames I’ve ever seen.  He didn’t recognize me right off.

“Jack–it’s Luellen.”  I kissed him on the lips and he smiled.

“How are you?” he said softly.

“I’m good. I was just driving by, and saw your sign. What a place you got here, it’s beautiful.”

“What? I can’t hear you. Speak up.”

“I SAID IT’S A BEAUTIFUL SPACE YOU HAVE HERE!”

“You know how many customers come in off the street?” he     asked.     

“How many?”

“One.In a whole year, one customer.”

“Oh Jack, that’s awful.”

“What? I can’t hear?”

“IT’S AWFUL TO HEAR THAT.”  

“ Look out the window.”  He said. I turned to look, and a young man was passing by. He was hunched over, plugged into an Ipod,  dressed in crotch hugging jeans, a sweatshirt, and lace-up shoes.

“Look at that-no one dresses. They all look like that,” he said.  

“ Jack, they look like that everywhere.”

“Call Bonnie,(his wife)and ask her to come down to the shop.”

I wondered why he didn’t have a hearing aid; knowing Jack, it wasn’t stylish enough. Bonnie got on the phone with me, while Jack sat, staring into his memory through floor to ceiling glass windows.  What separates Jack from all the others is that Jack’s continental suits are custom fit to the customer by Jack, and no one else. His tailors hand stitch each item; with custom lining, handmade bottom holes, and your name woven into the pinstripes.

I remembered back to the summer of 94, when Jack used to fancy-foot around the shop on Camden Drive; calling out orders, answering phones, greeting customers, and yelling at me,

” Luellen, don’t just stand there. For crying out loud, count the suits or something!”  Whenever I went to do something, he shouted, “For crying out loud Luellen, don’t do it like that!” He repeated the same script to me every day for three months. He had a similar script for everyone in the shop. His tailors, some of whom have been there thirty years, shake their heads in frustration and sew. Behind all that shouting and hollering is one of the good guys, a guy who would give you the shirt off his back, a guy from Brooklyn. 

Bonnie, his wife for some fifty years, speaks with a flare born from the genes of an actress. She’s theatrical without being in the business. “Oh Luellen darling–it’s so good to hear your voice. How are you? Did Jack recognize you?”

“Oh yes, right away.” I fibbed.

“I’m surprised. He can’t hear, his eyes are bad, but he won’t leave the shop.”

“Bonny, he said he has no customers. Is that true?”

“Unfortunately, it is. We both thought new customers would come from the second generation, but it didn’t happen, so what can you do? All the old ones are failing or dead. Tell me about you. Are you married?”

Bonnie and I chatted while Jack talked with Soaring Crow. I was looking at Jack the whole time I was on the phone. I noticed the way he raised his brows, and shut-tight smile that resonates a New York edgy resignation. His expressions were so familiar to me from working with him that summer.

“How’s your daughter?” I asked Bonnie.

“She died four years ago.”

I was watching Jack, “Oh Bonnie, I’m so sorry.” Jack’s eyes darted back to me. I promised Bonnie I’d come back and we’d all have dinner. I told her about the memoir and she remarked, “I have lots of stories about your father. He was a character.”   

After I hung up the phone, Jack yelled, “Is Bonnie coming down?”

“No. She’s not up to it right now,” I answered. He pressed his lips into a thin disappointedly accepting line. For twenty years Bonnie worked side by side with Jack. She knew every customer, and made them feel like family. As a young teenager dad used to bring us in the shop. Bonnie always made an effort to be our friend.     

“Look out the window, there’s another one. See what I mean?” Jack said.

“Yes Jack. I do. Listen, I want to thank you for giving me a job that summer. I never had a chance to thank you. It really meant a lot to me.”

He smiled. “I can’t sit here all day and count the birds. What am I gonna do?”

“What do you want to do?” I answered.

 He shrugged his shoulders.

“Do you have any hobbies, anything else you like besides suits?”

“I love to paint.”

“Paint?” Well that’s what you should do.”

“Look over there,” he gestured with a heavy arm. On the wall behind me, half a dozen oil paintings were hanging. I noticed one of a young sailor standing next to his ship.

“I really like that one Jack. I think you should paint.”

 “What?”

 “I said, RETIRE AND PAINT.”

He shrugged his shoulders. I kissed him again and he didn’t move from the chair. He needed me to raise him up, close the shop, and lock the door. I would have done it if he was all alone. I wanted to take him back to Santa Fe and place him at the Audubon, and let him paint the swallows.

 I walked out and looked back once. He was staring out the window. I thought about the stories he used to tell, like the time Mickey Cohen came rushing through the shop and dropped a suitcase at Jack’s feet, “Hold onto this until I get back.” Mickey had commanded.

“What was in it Jack?”

“Whatta ya think? Stolen loot. They all used to come through the shop on the way out of Ducker’s Barber Shop.  I couldn’t stop them–they did what they did–I don’t even know what they did, but use my phone all day.”  

After I left Jack, Soaring Crow drove me over Laurel Canyon to meet Marietta, my mother’s friend.  We had just passed Lookout Mountain when I recalled being there. It was painted right before my eyes. Lizzie, one of the wild ones in high school, and I used to drive up there in her British racing green Volvo. She loved going to mountain tops. We’d get high, and lean into the flickering spray of lights imagining all we were missing by beings so darn young. We didn’t know then we weren’t missing anything. We had it all; a big bubbling hot city filled with mysteries, puzzles, romance, and opportunities. Neither one of us had dreams of college and marriage. Lizzie wanted a baby, and I wanted to runaway to a distant splendor in the grass. As Soaring Crow descended the canyon and inched towards Studio city, I glanced over, and noticed a street sign, Sunshine Terrace.

“That’s where Kenny used to live with his parents. I bet his mother is still there.  I’m going to call her.” Kenny was an irreplaceable boyfriend at eighteen, who later became the man who guided me towards writing. He used to shout out loud about how f—g good my poetry was, and how I should be published. Who can let go of a guy like that.  

Kenny’s dad, Bernie the big shot, who everyone tolerated because he was a WWII Nazi military prosecutor, had died years before. You couldn’t butter your bread without Bernie finding something fishy about it. Soaring Crow met Kenny back in the nineties, when Kenny dropped by his house on his way to living in a campsite in Escondido. He stayed a month.      

“Kenny! What a case that one is. You gotta love him. I understand him now. I know why he bailed out of society. I thought he was weird back then.” Soaring Crow chuckled thinking about Ken. He always had a neatly organized backpack, a cigar in his mouth, and carried a little black book with all his notes and phone numbers. He was an herbal tea importer and an inventor of gadgets.    

We drove into the strip center on Ventura Boulevard fifteen minutes early. I called information and got the phone number for Ken’s mother, Anna Marie.

“Hello Anna Maria, it’s Luellen.”

 “Oh Luellen how are you? It’s been a long time.” That was an understatement. It had been thirty years or more.”  Her voice revealed so much. She spoke in long unwavering sentences, and it reminded me of how long-winded Ken could be when he got on his philosophical podium.  She was Austrian and her accent smoothed out the awkward moments.   

“I’ll be 84 this week.”

“Really? Well Happy Birthday.”

“ Oh thank you. I’ve been in this house fifty years.”

“ Wow, that’s amazing. It’s a beautiful house. I always admired your cooking and gardening.”

“ I don’t do much of that anymore.” 

“ How is Ken doing?” I asked.

“ He moved to Guatemala.”

“ Really? When was that?”

“ Five years ago.”

“ Have you seen him lately?”

“Five years ago was the last time.”

“Is he all right?”

“He says he is. But I don’t know. We email, and sometimes he’ll call. I wish he would visit.”

“He couldn’t stand living in Los Angeles, or anywhere in the US.”  I added.

“He lived in Ensenada for years; then he decided to go to Guatemala. It’s so far. He loves the Latin culture. It’s too hot for me. He should come back and visit. I need a little help.”

“What about the other brothers?”

“Rick has cancer.”  

I rolled the rental-car window down and looked through people as they walked by. I didn’t tell her I was around the corner; I couldn’t just stop in and leave five minutes later.   

“I’m so happy you called. I’ll tell Ken when I write to him next time. Are you married?”

“No.”

“Oh well. So nice to hear from you. Come and visit sometime.”

“I will, I promise you I will.” 

As I left the car and headed upstairs to meet Marietta I felt a peck of familiarity with my surroundings. I was standing in front of the Starbucks, where Ken used to call me from when he was in town.

“ I’m over here at Starbucks, what a nightmare, I can’t even find a set a teeth in the place, nobody smiles. I’m telling you Lou, this isn’t the way it’s supposed to me. I got a headache and nothing even happened yet.” I wished he was sitting there, he could bring hours of non-stop laughter.     

Soaring Crow opened the door to the Daily Grill. Seated on a high stool, next to the hostess, was a strikingly beautiful woman. Her hair was pulled back in a bandana, and fell to her shoulders. Her skin was snow white, with a frosty pink glow and her china blue eyes glistened when she smiled.

 

 

 

 

 

“Oh you must be Luellen.  I knew it right away; you look like your mother.”  To be continued next week.

Any dice to throw: Email: folliesls@aol.com

 

THE HAPPIEST MAN ALIVE

The throw of the dice this week is a continuation from last months column, which is too long a time for a continuation.

I left off, where I was about to stop by Maurice’s home. I’ve written about him several times over the years. Maurice was raised on a small modest farm in Iowa, where he used to race his horse across the open fields, when he wasn’t milking cows and picking corn. When he turned seventeen he left home, and hitchhiked to Solana Beach, where his girlfriend was working in a home in Rancho Santa Fe. Maurice worked on the ranches of Rancho Santa Fe, until he was drafted into the army. It was Christmas day, and the day after his wedding. When he returned to his wife three years later, they began a life in Solana Beach. He began living as the happiest man alive.

I had to wait a year or more before I could drive by his house in Solana Beach, knowing he wouldn’t be out in the garden, or fixing miniature furniture, or baking cinnamon rolls for all his girlfriends.  

I had to wait, because the little white house with the white picket fence without Maurice was like a flower without petals, or a child without a mother.

Maurice came into my life, in an almost fictional way. I can see him now; standing amongst the hundreds of Christmas lights he strung up every year across his lawn, over the roof, winding around the trees and over the garage all the way to the street. He even had one of those talking toys that sang, ‘Ho Ho Ho  Merry Christmas’ when you rang the door-bell. Inside the tiny living room, he filled every shelf and empty corner with ceramic glass or tin ornaments, a dedication to his wife who passed away ten years earlier, and their wedding anniversary.  

When Maurice opened his front door, he laughed out loud, when the mechanical voice, shrieked, Merry Christmas. Before he even said anything, his smile beamed as he waited for me to laugh with him. Then he led me to the sofa, in front of a coffee table covered with homemade powered sugar cookies and chocolate covered almonds and cashews, and said, “Go on, sit down and I’ll make some drinks.”  But that wasn’t the first time I met Maurice. The first time I met him; I was walking down the street at dusk, just taking a walk with a moon shadow following me.

     “How are you tonight?” We talked only a moment or so before he asked me inside for a drink.

     “Thank You. I’m going to take a rain check; I live right down the street.”  It was such an innocent invitation; I felt absolutely no fear other than that ground in nuisance fear that precedes any invitation from a man. 

     “I know where you live.”

     “Oh? I’m going to come back–really I am.”

     “I sure hope so. I love to have company.”

That was Christmas 1994.

The next night, I dragged Rudy with me to look at Maurice’s flickering Christmas lights. We didn’t get a chance to knock on the door, he must have seen us through the window, and he opened it.

     “Are you coming in this time?” 

     “Yes, I mean if it’s not a bad time.”

     “It’s never a bad time for friends.”

I clutched Rudy’s hand and we crossed over the reindeers seated in the flying red sleigh and magical little toys that glittered beside Santa Claus, and went inside.  I was already sure that this was going to save me from a mediocre Christmas, while Rudy was still quizzically observing Maurice’s easy behavior. Maurice was seventy-nine years old, cut lean and taught like a racehorse. His long white hair was combed straight back without a part, and he was dressed in faded Levi’s, Nikes, and a pressed bottom-up shirt.  

“Are you hungry?” He asked.

“Hell yes,” Rudy shouted. Maurice jetted out to the kitchen leaving us to sink into the worn cushions of his sofa, and listen to country western Christmas Carols. We stayed and laughed through an assortment of snacks, music, and Maurice dancing about as we hooted and howled like Iowan farmers.

When I stopped by a day or two later to thank him, he said.

  I’m the happiest man alive.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  “Because I have so much to be thankful for, and I have such good good friends.”

  “Maurice, are you happy all the time?”

  “Oh yes-all the time. I get angry like everyone else, but I’m so lucky.”

  “Why?”

Then he told me the story of the three days he squatted along the beachhead at Buna, Australia within the confines of tropical diseases, rain, mud, and without water or food.  By the time the last Japanese positions had fallen, one thousand or more Americans lay dead, with thousands more wounded or sick.

  “They was much stronger and more equipped than us.  I made a vow with God, if he got me out alive, I would never ask for anything again and never complain about anything again. “

  “You kept your word.”

  “ I sure have. I watched my whole squadron die, almost all of them. They was such young boys, you just couldn’t believe it was happening.”

I went back to Maurice’s house almost every day, and asked him how he was. “I feel so good; I’ve never felt better in my life.”  Sometimes he’d alternate and say, “I’m the luckiest man alive.”  I never caught him complaining, or tilting forward with regret. He didn’t waste his time judging, avoiding, or renouncing change. He kept his old fashioned machinery, furnishings and style and let everyone else go crazy trying to be modern and chic. Every knick knack had some special meaning or story to go along with it. Like the corn husker he hung out in the garage, the same one he used when he was a kid. But what he loved most about that house was his orange tree. He always loaded me up with a grocery bag filled with oranges. “They make the best orange juice you ever had.”   

Over the next four years, I was at Maurice’s home, at least twice a week. I watched Rodeo with him, watched him plant tomatoes and cucumbers, cut sweet peas and roses for his friends, fry chicken, fix furniture, feed Bugsy the cat when he was only a day old, and dance in the front room while singing some country tune.  I recorded his whole story on tape, and then wrote a book about his life.  “I don’t think I’m that interesting, but if you think so, I’ll tell you anything you want to know.”  I learned what it was like to grow up on a farm during the depression in middle America. His family lost the farm, and that’s when young Maurice put out his thumb on Highway 80, and hitchhiked to San Diego.

  “I was so lucky! I was picked up by a woman in a Cadillac who needed someone to drive her car.”

Then, when I wasn’t paying attention, Maurice grew distant, he turned down invitations to dinner, and he stopped inviting me. I didn’t ask him why, I just accepted it, which was where I went wrong.

I even passed him in the drugstore one day, and instead of confronting him, I darted out the front door. About six months later I got a phone call from his niece.

  “I’m calling because Maurice passed away.”

  “NO.”

  “Yes, he did. But he didn’t suffer, he went very quick.”

  “Was he at home?”

  “ Yes. Lynn found him under the orange tree.” 

I drove past his house, and had to keep on going. There was nothing left of the garden, and the new owners had placed those skinny tall poles signifying, a demolition for a new two-story house.  Maurice is still a part of my life. I realize I was lucky, to have met him and known his story. Any dice to throw email: folliesls@aol.com  

LIFE ON THE OTHER SIDE

DiceAdventures in Livingness

 By: Louellen  Smiley

 

 

The throw of the dice this week lands  on adventures in living on the other side.  Just when I put my finger on truth, the truth comes back modified.  

The growing up with gangsters columns were like that, sometimes I’d superimpose a bit of falseness to minimize the harshness. I was writing for a community newspaper, and exposing my family history for the first time.  The truth came back; it squeezed in there between readings, or after I’d sent the column for publication. The confrontation of my own judgment; I didn’t approve of what I had written.  I hadn’t told the truth

I received letters of encouragement from friends, and once in awhile someone from the wrinkled pages of the past would respond.  The garage doorman where I lived with my father in Hollywood discovered my column in a search for Allen Smiley. He wrote me several stories, and confided his genuine respect toward my father, who treated him very cordially.  He also said word got around the Doheny Towers to do what Smiley says, or else.   

 The gangster columns always surprised me after they were written.  You don’t know what you remember until you begin writing.  Entire conversations replayed so effortlessly from so many years ago.  

Without readers, that wrote back they wanted more, I wouldn’t have continued.   Had I stopped writing about that subject, then I wouldn’t have had all that practice. It took a lot of practice; like playing an instrument, or learning to dance. Writing about a subject I was forbidden to even think about, was liberating, and it freed up a part of me that was caught in self deception.  Sharing the history with a community newspaper is different than sending it into the world.   If the subject wasn’t so forbidden and complex; there would be a lot more memoirs by descendants of organized crime figures.  Imagine reading the memoir of Benjamin Siegel’s daughter.  You never will.  Nor anyone related to him.  

None of my articles were published nationally until a few months ago.  I had been in a feverish temperament to get published and submitted something almost every morning the moment I woke up.  I felt empowered hitting up the major newspapers, and  magazines.   Sipping coffee and streaming in absolute absorption of getting published; it was a very satisfying feeling.    It’s like going into the dressing room in a department store, and allowing those three way mirrors to reflect every inch of you.  Once you get used to it, it’s not so bad, and besides, no one looks good in a three way mirror except nature and children.  I was up to about forty submissions, when I decided to send a note to a friend who worked at the New York Post.   I was trained not to ask for favors, because you know in the world my father lived in, ‘a favor can kill you faster than a bullet’ (that line is from Carlito’s Way, but it really applies to the whole thing).  I sent a note in defiance of this training, and asked if he thought this might work for the Post.  Joe replied that he’d run it upstairs to an editor he knew. 

Several days later, I received a note from the editor; she’d like to run a story in the Sunday edition, and would I write something up about growing up with gangsters. My swivel desk chair spun around, you know, and I did a double jump, a few more sporadic yelps and  then I had to get busy.  It was Thursday, and she wanted it by Friday.  All the material was on the hard drive, and even more accessible it was in my head, memorized from so many submissions and queries.  We worked on the piece together; she was really terrific to work with and she shaped it up beautifully.

 On Sunday I went looking for the Post; and there wasn’t a book shelf in the city that carried it.  Then my New York pal Joey called up, “I got the paper—yea—it’s great, like the whole page.”  The whole page I thought to myself. “There’s a few photographs of your mother and father,  the photo of you is a thumbprint.”  The irony is that the Times used to write about my parents, Winchell and another columnist, things like,  “Smiley and Casey are imaging,”  I couldn’t figure that out—at first. 

 Viewing the Post online isn’t the same as in print,  but I sat back and enjoyed the feeling of finality.  For me that was it, it was over, unless they wanted more columns, I was basking in the election of a column in a national publication with over one million readers. 

That wasn’t the end of it.  The Post became pre-occupied with Elliott Spitzer, and then the elections, and so my submissions are on hold.  What I hadn’t anticipated was a call from a literary agent asking to read what I’d written.  I mentioned I was working on a memoir in the byline.  It caught me off guard, like all the great surprises and disappointments, they just never happen when you expect them.   I told this agent I’d send a chapter and overview.   I had to catch my breath; I was caught.   The memoir was in the trunk, the trunk I closed because it deluded my thinking, my eating, and my living.  I hadn’t worked on it since 2005.

I pulled together a sample chapter and sent it off to New York.  I’d waited up to three months for a reply in the past, only to receive a scribbled note written in a moment of haste, ‘not for me, or I’ll pass.’ The agent called me personally, and I took the cell phone outside, and while he talked, I looked at the sky and tried to sound calm. He was enthusiastic; and he had represented mob related stories for twenty years. Though the writing was not acceptable, he’d have his editor make comments, and returned to me along with a contract.

 I was standing outside, looking right through to that other side, the one I’d dreamt about for twenty years.   The sky fell in my lap.  Unbelieving, in the same manner that follows news of a death you hadn’t expected, for days– even weeks I couldn’t grasp it.  What made the whole episode more intense was that this same agent had read some of my work, in novel form, twenty years ago, and passed on it. 

That is why the columns are arriving later and with less frequency; because I am writing the memoir in earnest.  I’m on the other side of the dream, and there is no more room for hiding, shading the truth, or giving up.

I’m still throwing the dice and the columns will continue throughout this process. Thank you reader for keeping me in practice!

Any dice to  throw email: folliesls@aol.com

SMILEY’S DICE

CONFESSIONS OF OTHER KIDS  

The day after Confessions of a Mob Kid posted Iin the NEW YORK POST new names appeared in my email box.  The messages were the same, “We have a connection.”

Over the years I’ve contemplated the whereabouts of all those aunts and uncles belonging to my father’s world. The aunts and uncles were not genetic; they were part of that other family. 

Some of them had children that became part of my childhood gang.

When our fathers were talking business in delicatessens, poolside or a hotel, we were busy being children.  Over the years I asked dad what happened to some of these kids, and he‘d answer, “Meyer puts it this way; ‘You don’t inherit friends.  He said if often, as if it was a warning; “When I’m gone so are my friends.” He was right; all of his friends vanished into thin air. It was if they had not been part of my life. Yet they formed my first impressions of conversations and behavior between adults.  They set the standards for whom I felt comfortable and with whom I didn’t.  

 The first email was signed Uncle Myron. He said his father, known as “Sugie,” was in the juke box business in New Jersey with Abner “Longy” Zwillman.  We had a juke box in our first home.  I was too young to remember Abner, but I remember the name Longy; my dad talked of him with other friends.  Uncle Myron took over his fathers business and during the seventies and eighties was known as the Emperor of slot machines in New York.  

After three emails, I was ready to talk to my Uncle Myron.   

“Hi Myron, this is Luellen.”

“How are you sweetheart?”  That one line ran circles around my memory. His voice assimilated all the voices of those uncles, and best friends that left without saying goodbye.

“I’m all right.”

“Our fathers were from another world.”

“I know. Do you think they’d be angry with what I wrote?”

“Absolutely NOT! Are you kidding, you’re humanizing them. My father may his soul rest in peace, worked with Longy and Meyer.

“Yes, mine did too. But more closely with Ben Siegel.”

“Sure, they all came from the same fabric. And when you met them, you were part of the family instantly. They knew how to treat you so you would never forget.

“ I haven’t forgotten.”     

“When did dad pass on?”

“It was 1982.  I was devastated. It was awkward to have that background and no one to share it with.

“It’s difficult for all the kids to adjust after that upbringing.”

“Are there a lot of us?”

“Sure, some don’t acknowledge the background; they hide for one reason or another. Most of them are in legitimate business today, it’s a different world sweetheart.”

Sugerman broke the ice within seconds.  I was ready at that moment to get on a flight to Newark and meet him.  Over the next few days he sent me fascinating articles and stories.  The breakage of that controversial and complex lineage is rebuilding itself.  I feel as if I can call on him any time of the day.  

The next email came from a relative of another member of the Jersey boys.  He knew both my parents, and especially liked my mother. He had stories to tell and was eager to exchange impressions.  We got cut short on the telephone by present day business interruptions. 

The next one came a few days later. First an email and then a request to call him.  When Michael answered the phone, he introduced himself as

an associate by birth of the Cleveland Syndicate. It struck me that each one felt loyalty towards their parent’s people.   

My dad was as close to the Cleveland bosses as he was to Ben Siegel.  Lou Rothkopf, one of the four bosses was referred to as Uncle Rhody. Lou flew out to be with Dad the night of Ben’s murder. He would do more for a friend than the friend’s own family. If someone owed him money, he crossed the street to avoid the meeting. He was respected in his community.  After Senator Estes Kefauver whipped up the country’s vengeance against gangsters, bookmakers, bootleggers, and on down the line, Lou was called in to testify.  The humiliation killed him, he committed suicide. Michael’s Uncle was part of Lou’s syndicate.  It is better known as the “Silent Syndicate” because the bosses were so understated. They’d never have been discovered by the feds if it wasn’t for the fabulously flamboyant Benny Siegel. 

Michael didn’t follow in his dad’s footsteps but he has no reservation about pointing to his history. He is, like Myron, an educated and proud Jew.   “I’m sick to death of the caricatures of hoodlums in books and on television.    My life is boring–the history of my people is what fascinates me.  If I had more time I’d study it all day long.” 

“Me too.  They seemed to run the whole country.”

“They did! Your absolutely right.”

“We have a very close connection.”

“We do?”

“Yea. Are you sitting down?”

“Yes.”  

“You know who backed the Flamingo.”

 “New York and Chicago wasn’t it?”

“Cleveland.”

“Oh really.”

“You know what I think?”

“What?”

“ Cleveland took Ben out.”

“Cleveland? You don’t mean Rhody’s clan?”

“I don’t know– its conjecture. From all the stories I heard, the books I’ve read–that’s what I’ve hypothesized.”

We talked for over an hour, and then he said, “Call me anytime; I’d love to talk more. I have a lot of stories about Cleveland.” 

The third connection came as I was driving along the highway in Santa Fe. When she identified herself, I told her to hang on, “I had to faint first.”

It had been thirty years since I’d spoken to her.   She was the one I wanted to find.  I’d imagined our meeting again.  Our mother’s were best friends.   Instead, I was given a friendly warning not to mention anyone in her family.  I agreed.  I didn’t inherit his friends, but I did adopt his sense of loyalty. When a friend says don’t identify me; there is no argument.  I doubt we will have that reunion. She is suspicious of writers and honestly I can’t do anything without writing about it.  

No regrets on my end.  Had it not been for the New York Post, I wouldn’t

be planning a trip to New Jersey to meet Uncle Myron.   He’s saving the

best stories until we meet, and I will pass them on to you.    

ADVENTURES IN FILM

     Smiley’s Dice  Adventures in Livingness

The throw of the dice this week lands on adventures in the year of blessings.

Had I known I’d be writing from a Victorian home, with a window facing the southwest, filled with pine and spruce trees and a Mediterranean blue sky;  I wouldn’t have loathed that 100 square foot studio back in 1994 and 95. Now I love the studio because it taught me to live without comfort.  I cramped out for two years in Solana Beach. Two-hundred queen palms tranquilized the neurosis of living in squirrel like quarters.  I had California sunshine and the pacific ocean to sandwich between the scarcity of profit or progress.   I loved that studio for what it taught me.

  This year erupted with lessons of the same principle.  We began with dismal sales, empty streets, and isolation, into a fantasia of surprises. None of them came with any warning.  When a note was pinned to my door as a possible location for the film Brothers, there was no stopping me.                 “By the way, whose in the movie?” I asked Clay, the Location Scout.

               ” Sam Shepard, Toby Maguire, Natalie Portman, Jake Gallenhaal.  They’ll all be in your house for the scene.”

               “Sam Shepard in the house?”

               ”You like him–everyone does–he’s so cool.”

               “You don’t understand.  Sam is half the reason I ended up here.”                               

                “You’ll have to tell him. “    

 

I used to read about Sam and Jessica in the early eighties, high tailing it out of Los Angeles for Santa Fe. I thought these two know how to live.   I read about their ranch and the wide-open hospitality that greeted them. I knew I had to come see for myself.  Over the years, I’ve spotted them here and in Los Angeles.   I’m not a stargazer. Only a select few get my attention, and they did.

 

 I retreated to the upstairs while the film crew went to work transforming our gallery into a military family home. They painted, wallpapered, and then re designed the décor.   On the forth day  I watched the trucks unload furniture, then came the drapery and the lighting. By the sixth day, I was living in Sam Shepard’s home.  The set designers and location scouts became roommates; entering and exiting as I continued to live around them. I watched  as they created the tapestry of a set design; down to fitting in the pieces of a puzzle for display.  I took notice of the tiny details after they left; mail and bills in the desk, rain coats and boots on the entry hooks, and photographs of Toby Maguire on my mantelpiece. I lived with the set two weeks. Alice and Bugsy found their favorite napping chairs.  When the crew left, the house felt empty-I’d gotten so use to their laughter and companionship.

The day of the shoot we moved across the street to the hotel. A new

brigade of film security formed a circle around the house. Each time I crossed their path, they backed up for me, and let me through.

I squeezed through the kitchen and was greeted with new technicians, producers, and photographers. It was like being on the busiest school bus and you knew everyone. I asked to get  in my bathroom to fetch my lipstick.     

            ” LouLou  needs make-up,..” a woman shouted.  They ran off to find the make-up artist. ” No, No– really. I  just need lipstick.” 

      “All quite on the set –shooting!” Everyone all at once comes to attention.   I watched Sam Shepard on the monitor; tall and slinky with that wild crown of hair and primitive eyes. He still has the outdoor boyish look, like he just walked up from the lake.   

  

The shoot lasted two days.  On the third day I returned early in the morning. The cameras, lighting, trucks, generators, carts, black drapes; all of it gone. They worked until three in the morning—in the snow.  The following night I walked into La Posada Staab House bar. There was an empty seat next to Sam.  I asked him if  I could sit down.    “Yea, sure.”   “ I’m Loulou, you  just filmed at my house.”

   “ Oh really. That’s a beautiful house.  I loved that house. When was it built?” We talked about the old house, horses, and Saratoga. He was a kind man; a good listener, and a good story teller. 

It took a few days to adjust back to life without the creative crew on board.

 The production disrupted my life, and that was a blessing. The chance to fit into the creation of an artistic performance; whether it is dance, music or film should happen more often.  They were the professionals, working 16 hour days without complaint. The promises they made, they kept. 

 After they left I returned to the desk and determinedly continued submitting stories every morning. I asked a New York pal to elevator my story up to the New York Post. Several days later, the editor emailed a request for a story about growing up with gangsters.  All the years vanished; the shed, the rejections, and the hopelessness.  Like my dad used to say,

” Your whole life can change overnight.” 

 Nothing GREAT happens without a crew; you the readers are mine. You’ve kept me throwing the dice. THANK YOU.

Any dice to throw Email: folliesls@aol.com 

   

GET LOST THEN FOUND

The best way to find your path
is to get lost

 

Luellen Smiley

 The throw of the dice this week lands on new directions in living. Before that happens, you have to get lost, detached, and miserable. It messes up your social life, your routines, your comfort, and your partner. Men wonder why women change so often, why we are spirited unicorns one day and mules the next. This comes from the universal need to roam, to feel new sensations and passions, and to find more things to love. Even our closets are overflowing with love: “I love those shoes; I love that coat.” We replace our wardrobes because we need more garments to love.At the crossroads of some moment in time, I stopped loving material things, my partner, my reflection, and went looking for a deeper direction of sensation.This change started last year when my life was tangled up in two projects that were not progressing. As long as someone didn’t raise the curtain on my imaginary life, I stayed right there, like a gearshift left in neutral. When failure and rejection continued to knock me on the shoulder, I welcomed the familiar knock and remained sationary.The exact moment I decided to shift gears was a painful one. I let go of both projects that were obstructing my motion. I have extracted the natures of the projects because they really are irrelevant. After I let go and watched those long-term efforts just dangle from boxes, notebooks, and letters of correspondence, the straight of my back curved. Where is my direction? Where are any of us going anyway, except away from that moment in which we have no control?I spent the first few months mumbling to myself at Henry’s Market, in Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf, and in the car, when I was able to shift gears ferociously. If I asked why hadn’t this happened and that happened, I was then distracted by some woman in the car next to me who was having more fun in her convertible talking on her cell phone. Routines were becoming burdens, and my favorite places of comfort were getting too crowded.Miraculous incidents entered into this period. I met a woman who was successful and joyful and who had no overriding motive in sharing her life with me. People came into my private life without invitation and sometimes laid a little footing for the new life I was about to build. Encouragement came from writing columns, reading letters, and taking those long, solitary road trips to Taos. I felt like I was sleeping, but even in that state of detachment people were finding me and shaking me up.During Christmas, we took a trip to Taos, and while the flu changed the course of the trip, it allowed me time to watch the stars from my bedroom. I remembered one of the faintest memories of my childhood. I cannot even recall the place I was or who was there. Most certainly, it was not my father and mother. We were camping out, and I was in a sleeping bag on the hard gravel ground. It was so unfamiliar to me, the simplicity of the natural surroundings, the heavy, black balm of tranquility, and the brightness of each star. I laid awake most of the night talking to my fellow campers, and at some point they said to go to sleep. I could not close my eyes. The adventure had swept me into a state of alertness, the kind that makes you feel extraterrestrial. That night must have taught me to welcome new adventures. Sometimes these kinds of nights have ruined months of my life, but most definitely, at the end, I have sprung up with a new line of faith.After this Christmas visit, I returned to my blank life and started to make a few lines of progress. Still, it was a façade of motion, not the true birth of energy. And then another season passed, and there I was again in Taos. It was as if someone else dropped down into my soul and engaged all my gears at once. Without second-guessing or considering the probability of failure, I leaped into a new direction. Again, I am leaving out particulars because it is not the direction I took or what I chose because it could be anything. We all want to roam and love and find some nugget of truth at the end of the road. I think women need to roam more now than men. We just realized that nothing can stop us, and if we do not take advantage of that freedom, we are missing the big scene in our home movie.After I announced the new direction, and SC followed along willingly, we arrived at the new destination. As the plan opened, the soil beneath our feet turned in our direction. Things are beginning to grow; buds of creativity I never imagined are striking at me at all hours of the night. Friendships like flags waving over distant countries are inviting us to join. Strangers are stopping to talk and even help build this new footing. It was only a matter of shifting gears. Within this new garden of growth I stumble and ask for direction, and miraculously I get it. Any dice to throw? E-mail it to folliesls@aol.com.

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Uncategorized « Galleryloulou’s Weblog

Uncategorized « Galleryloulou’s Weblog

SMILEY’S DICE ON THE LOST DICE

   The throw of the dice this week lands on the lost dice.  It was an unusual time to be writing the column, around four in the afternoon. The sunshine drew me up upstairs to my writing desk, where rays of winter light teased me into believing it wasn’t freezing outside.  I decided to write the column. I knew I shouldn’t write on my laptop because it is deconstructing. The ports and CD player have malfunctioned, the words suddenly go black, and the mouse isn’t operable. But the warmth of the sun, and the window that enables me to see the sky, drew me to the desk and so I worked around the errors.  If someone came into the downstairs gallery, I’d hear the little bell. I began the column and then, the little bell rang.  Richard came by to say hi, and to tell me about Art Basel in Miami;  his  month long episode of painting in T-shirts and sandals, the galas, the ocean, and so I enjoyed the conversation of Richard Kurtz, a very talented living art sort of artist,  he paints abstract graffiti.   Another ring of the bell and it was the Rabbi and his friend. I just met him a week ago. He comes on Sabbath and refuses most everything  I offer. He sat outside on the porch and we talked about the absence of business in Santa Fe.  After the Rabbi left, I took a bath, heated left over soup, and then about nine, I began to write again.   I only had a few paragraphs written from the afternoon, and  when I returned to the column after dinner, the whole piece took another course.  I was writing not what I intended, but it was sailing on a perfect course.   It was writing without the editor, meaning the inner editor that sometimes swoops down and bites your nails off. I was writing about many things that happened. It was titled the Events of December.    When I finished, I clicked to save the document and the laptop responded negatively. It vanished. In fact everything on the computer vanished.      I’ve  thought about trying to recapture the column, trying to reinvent the stream of consciousness that seemed to be marathoning through my soul.   There were so many voices speaking all at once.  I had to figure out how to connect the moment the snow reminded me of a blank piece of paper, and how we must place our print on the snow, on the white page, on our own path.  I wrote about my father, and how he used to mock my adolescent mantra, “ I want to be alone,” and how I could not explain to him why I wanted to be alone.  Then, at one moment in the path of the full moon, I realized I wasn’t wrong, being alone is a part of my life. I was practicing back then.  I didn’t have much to show for it; a few poems, a diary, but nothing I could show my father and say, “ This is what brings me joy.”     I wrote about Santa Fe this season.  This one night I took a walk down Palace Avenue, and the snowflakes fell on my lashes, light as the touch of Alice’s paws when she strokes my face, and it made me laugh, and want to tell someone. As people walked past me, they burrowed their heads  in their coats, and looked to the ground.  There were  people gathering at the Plaza  prancing around a tented booth, wrapped in colorful scarf’s and hats,  netted by  hundreds of flickering Christmas lights. The beauty was  heartbreakingly beautiful.  Contrary to this Bing Crosby White Christmas cinematic  beauty are the empty shops, and the salesclerks  staring through glass windows, or smoking outside in the snow.  Where have all the customers gone?  It is a unimaginably quiet melancholy three days before Christmas.       Last night was the silent night. After a month of receptions and house guests it was the first time I had to look back and recall the events with some crystallization.   At the end of the column, I found that my place was here, and that I was all right with the path I’d taken because it was my print in the world, even if sometimes it is very difficult to walk in these boots.  Our paths begin at birth, and we don’t understand our choices, for many years, until one moment, we do.   take the path all the way in 2008.    

Smiley’s Dice on Manhattan Part Four

Smiley’s Dice Adventures in Livingness

 By: Louellen Smiley   The throw of the dice this week falls on the last segment of Manhattan.  I had just left the Copafest and was in a cab, tailgating a Saturday night rush through Central Park. I went to a wedding in 1984 at Tavern on the Green. It was my sister’s wedding.  The roll of images spliced past like a silent movie  fast forward. The kind you cannot submarine, they float to the surface involuntarily, and you submit squirming.  The mood switched to the Copa, and to this one conversation, a long storied admission between women who trust one another. I don’t know why June confided in me. Just as I don’t know why later that night I would confide in Jerry.  June was a dancer at the Copa.  She met a  young promising singer there. She fell in love with him, and he with her. Their relationship lasted five years. It continued in the heart for years after that, and still today June is in love with the singer.  I was slumped into that kind of love mood, mesmerized by June’s beauty and  resemblance to the other woman who married the young singer. Then  the cab emptied me onto the Westside, and I was at Jerry Schatzberg’s  front door  ringing his bell.     Jerry was introduced to me through the art gallery business.  We exhibited his photographs of Jimi Hendrix, and corresponded by way of business. The first email I sent him was embedded with personal information I did not share with the other photographers.   It was instinctual guidance that enabled me to write to Jerry in a way that accentuated kinship.  The exhibition opened and closed.  His photographs were still in the main salon, and I looked at them from every angel. You get to know someone by their photographs. If you look at them, study them, and muse their moment, you will see the photographer taking it. I tried to imagine Jerry shooting “Reflection,”  more than the other photographs.  It was the most amazing shot of Jimi combing his hair in his dressing room.  He wore a double breasted  wool military jacket and his hair was fluffed out afrocentric vogue. He was smiling, but there was no visible smile. Jerry shot from behind, so you see the reflection of Jimi in the mirror, the way Jimi saw himself in the mirror.  But of course you don’t. It is the supreme temptation to imagine you can get inside his head.  I did in that photo. That is why I decided to ask Jerry to have dinner with me when I was in New York, and why I was now standing at his front door.              He answered and we crossed the first threshold quickly, and effortlessly. I was seated at his desk,  looking at his Bob Dylan portfolio on his computer. The Blonde on Blonde album cover he shot flashed, and I mumbled wow several times. Then the photos he took of Bob in his studio appeared, and I saw a Dylan that caused me to feel the hunger in my belly even more.  I watched the flash images, and intermittently glanced at the room. His walls were backdrops to films he directed, and the rugs were just shelves for the stacks of books he had to no room to shelve. I noticed Nelson Algren on a stack.  I imagined Jerry had more authors that I loved.     “ We should go, your hungry, he said.  I was starving; it was an inconvenient time to allow my hunger to overpower my fascination with seeing a Dylan only a very few had seen. We were walking down 85^th street to an Italian restaurant. Jerry walked New York, not the other way around. He stopped about midway of the block in front of a laundry. He chuckled and told me a synopsis of a story he was working on, and then I told him about Mimi on the plane, and how I felt she could develop into a story. Then we  walked at the same pace. I wasn’t lagging, or feigning my confidence.      “Oh I love this room,” I said as we entered the restaurant. Everyone looked up without hesitation as they do in New York.  I was flush with an absence of sight, when you just look straight through everything.   The host was waiting to take my order so Jerry asked me what I wanted to drink.I ordered a glass of wine, and Jerry said he’d pass because he was working.   “What are you working on?” “Three scripts, ones about…. And his voice trotted away without accentuation or affectation.  I told him about my works in progress and we continued talking all through the appetizers, dinner, and coffee. Then I was back in the cab and riding though Central Park. This time without the rollback images of my sister, my head was splitting with ten thousand waves of New York. The pavement raced by and I thought of Nelson Algren’s descriptions of New York, and Stieglitz’s images and I wanted to get out and dance  but instead I went back to the Chelsea Hotel.   I talked to the valet, swirled through the hotel, the bar next door, and went back to the blue room and looked out the window.   I’m insatiably romantic about New York because I have never lived there.   I fell asleep sitting up staring out that window, feeling a sliver of  myself in the scenery. Any dice to throw Email FolliesLs@aol.com

“Photography is a language of stories. The stories you choose for your home or office are an interpretation of what is in your heart.” LS
GALLERY LOULOU
20th Century Black & White Photography
The Royals & The Rebels
343 E. Palace Avenue
Santa Fe, NM 87501
Ph: 505-989-3426 Fax: 505-982-2350
loulou@galleryloulou.com www.galleryloulou.com
Hours: Tuesday – Sunday 11:00 am – 5: 00 pm OR BY APPOINTMENT

THE ARCHIVES OF PHILIP TOWNSEND… OH SO MOD LONDON. 1960

SANTA FE, NM. 

 We are a musician’s gallery and feature historic, classic, and iconic black & white photography of the 60’s and 70’s. It’s too soon to exhibit the 80’s.  If you are anywhere near to Santa Fe, stop in and say hi.  We are across the street from La Posada Resort & Spa, a place to hide and seek, great fireplace, bar, spa and French cuisine.  We represent the photographers who were there: Jimi, Janis, The Doors, The Beatles, The Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, Joe Cocker, Stevie Winwood,  Pink Floyd, Eric Clayton, Joni Mitchell, Santana, The Who, The Rolling Stones, Miles Davis, and the Modern Jazz grooves.   

  

PHILIP TOWNSEND EXHIBITION DECEMBER 7, 2008.  IN THE GARAGE – ON FILM / STONES EARLY PERFORMANCES ON ED SULLIVAN.   BEGGAR’S BANQUET — STONES MUSIC

The British panorama OF THE 1960s was photographed by a young worldly gentleman who worked a photojournalist for Tatler Magazine.   As the cultural movements of the 60s swung through Britain the royalty subverted to the new order of the rebels. Photographer Philip Townsend was there to record the British icons of music, art and fashion.   The good, the bad, and the beautiful passed in front of Philip’s camera:  Twiggy, the ingénue who broke the mold on the fashion figure, Nico, the princess of the rebel rockers, and Warhol’s chic mascot, The Beatlesin their first meeting with  the Maharishi, and the street fighting Rolling Stones, in their first photo session.  The Rolling Stones photographs underscore the bad boys of London before they were a “big bang.”  Philip was introduced to the group by legendary manager AndrewLoog Oldham, and the friendship continues today.   The new order of aristocrats was spearheaded by the Beatles and the Rolling Stones.  In their footsteps followed a parade of bands we still listen to today, some whom are  making a comeback.  When the swing of London dissolved in the 70s, Philip closed the lens of his camera and financed a series of creative projects.   Then in 2004, encouraged by compadres and friends, Philip regained an interest in his archives.  Retaining the copyright to all his work, Philip brought his portfolio to the attention of London’s galleries, and the exhibitions followed.   Philip’s photographs are archived in the Victoria & Albert Museum, the National Portrait Gallery, and the National Library of Wales.    iThe exhibition was curated by Philip, Dave Brolan of Mojo Magazine and Gallery LouLou.  There will be 30 limited edition prints on display through January 10, 2008.    Philip will be attending the opening reception.   

Louellen Smiley + Rudy Funk owners20^th CENTURY PHOTOGRAPHY / THE ROYALS & THE REBELS343 E. Palace AvenueSanta Fe, NM 87501 Tel: (505) 989-3426 Fax: 505- 982-2350 CELL: 518-859-7828 loulou@galleryloulou.com www.galleryloulou.com –ARTINFO.COM Tuesday – Sunday 11:00 AM – 5:00 PM BY APPOINTMENT OR RING THE BELL      

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