My glamorous mother was a real bohemian gypsy artist, traipsing all over the West Coast, following the jobs to Reno, Las Vegas and Hollywood but she always came back to her home base in San Francisco, where she was born, usually broke and more often, broken down. She'd mend for a spell and then she'd be off again seeking her fortune and fame on the road.
She'd talk of the places she'd been, the people she'd met. How nice Frank Sinatra was, how he bought her a drink at the Cal Neva. At one point, she did costumes for the show girls in Tahoe and Las Vegas, a connection which led to her working for costume designer Ruben Panis in Hollywood but that's a convoluted story of the 60s and '70s I'm not quite ready to excavate.
She brought home strangers she'd met, some of whom, paradoxically, I'd run into decades later as a poet: Beat poets Eugene Ruggles, Bobby Kaufman, in the late '60s and early '70s, even the singer Bobby Darin—who was holed up near Esalen. He was tall and thin and pale, leaned back on the couch in jeans and cowboy boots, hair pulled back in a ponytail, with the longest sideburns I'd ever seen. Enigmatic. I remember trying to fret the chords to "If I Were a Carpenter," on my cheap steel string guitar until my fingers bled.
I don't think he was impressed with my talent. I didn't get my Maritn until my 16th birthday, the winter of '68-69 in a pawn shop in San Francisco. The ending of Kevin Spacey's Beyond the Sea had a huge unexpected memory payload for me. I remember a very hippie Bobby sitting back on the sectional couch... But the corroborating details of those stories are lost.
When I was young, I wasn't interested, then she got too crazy with the drugs, I was distainful, now it's too late to recover the facts and now here I am, in my fifth decade, weaving the thin threads of the past into a tapestry of stories.
© 2007 Maureen Hurley
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3 comments:
So, I don't want to sound like a stalker... BUT I haven't been able to pull myself away from your blog since I discovered (and commented) last night! Not just for nostalgia, or "valley kid" camaraderie, but because your words weave a sort of literary magic.
BTW, I grew up on Resaca in FK, across from the Red House. Although we are a decade or so apart, I am familiar with most all you speak of, even when the names are changed. Coincidentally, I married (and divorced) Eugene Ruggles' youngest son. It would seem my dysfunction criss-crosses with yours, outside of the Valley as well.
Blessings for the New Year!
~Claudia
Hey Claudia,
Thanks-are you kidding?— I LOVE the comments...I thought it was Adair. I knew it was someone local. You probably knew my brother Guy. If you send me your email, I won't publish it, and we can get a gab in...
I distanced myself from The Valley as it was too painful until I could write about it... How did you find it? You're probably only the 2nd person to actually read it!
Adair and I are planning a trip down memory lane in Jan. Wanna come?
Yeah, there was a big turn out for Eugene and no one even thought to invite me to read or anything.... a lot of later jumpaboard poets claiming solidarity with Gene but where were they when he was evicted or when he's drunkenly call up at 3 AM to talk? He often called me when I lived in Forestville. And here I knew him since I was a kid...
—Maureen
My comments are SO very sincere! I, too, wanted to be as far away from the Valley as possible.... so I married a boy from Fairfax and we moved to San Rafael! Only after I was divorced, and unemployed (BTW I worked w/ Shannon Daly indirectly for about 5years) and seriously depressed with 2 small children did I find myself back out here. My parents offered their rental unit and I didn't feel I had a choice. My father got ill soon after the move and I became their fulltime caregiver. What an emotional, but healing, journey it's been ever since.
My feelings about Gene are mixed. He was a brilliant poet, but a tortured soul. I was at his service, to support my two sons, who only met him one time. My ex, Ben, was the only one of the three kids to be there. Actually, he had a fourth child, and she was there but she never knew him growing up. Her mother sponsored the event at the Phoenix, and was suddenly one of his biggest fans - upon his death, that is. Funny how people glorify in death those that they couldn't stand in life...
Anyway, my e-mail is claudiaruggles@yahoo.com
Reminiscing is always healing, in my experience. And I need all the healing I can get!
~claudia
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