Early Influences

Like many young children, I dreamed of being a cowgirl. First of all, in the early sixties, particularly in California where we lived at the time, the Western was King. Much of what we saw on TV was of the "Big Valley" type show and I'm pretty sure I modeled myself, however subconsciously, on Miss Kitty from Gunsmoke after a neighbor exclaimed, "Now there's a woman who knows how to TALK to a man." Looking back, I'm sure conversation wasn't high on the agenda there, but back then, even adult women were fairly innocent about that sort of thing.

When I was about to turn four, two things happened which changed the course of my life forever. First, a man  came by the house with a pony and a camera and little togs and my mother actually laid down the money to have my picture taken on the pony. I couldn't believe it: it seemed so glamorous and decadent and so thrilling to be immortalized on film as a real live cowgirl!  I  was even given a walk on the pony, to the end of the drive and back, and I remember leaning forward and urging the pony to run away, urges I didn't fulfill until many years later when I hopped on United Flight 888 and ran away to China. 

The second event; well, there was a little plastic pony advertised on TV: by "little" I mean not the size of a REAL pony, but one that was big enough for kids to ride on. You bounced up and down on the seat and the pony scooted forward. It was advertised for up to "age four" and I begged and begged my parents to buy me one. My father refused, telling me that I was "kind of big for my age" and "a little heavy" and that you weren't allowed to ride one after you turned four, so to give me one for my birthday was a waste of money. I was mortified: I wasn't fat, by any means, although I was your basic healthy little girl, and as a matter of fact, was in the lowest percentile of height (and still am.) Years later my mother told me Dad couldn't afford to buy one and this was his way of  (not) admitting it, but from then on I was convinced I was huge and therefore unworthy of having "normal" toys. (He said the same thing about putting a swing up in the yard--or buying a swing set-- or letting me ride the mechanical pony at the store that cost only a nickel... "You're kind of, well, HEAVY,  and just too big for that.") So, devastating as it was to my ego, at least you know I had enough to eat.

Our very own Auntie Mame and her brood.  Yeah, that's my dad holding the beer and singing right next to her .

Other influences: see the laughing happy people singing. This was my mother's best friend's family, and that was our player piano. Because it was a player, none of us learned to play it properly--as my mother put it, "Why bother to waste money on the kids' piano lessons when we can buy a roll for the song we like?" The piano had to have a roll of music put in it, not unlike a roll of toilet paper, and as we got older, the rolls were harder and harder to find, and the prices shot up. (I think the last one purchased was The Bee Gee's "No One Gets Too Much Heaven No More.") No wonder Dad couldn't afford that plastic pony, he was too busy buying classics such as "What Now My Love?"  "Feelin' Groovy" and "Theme to Dr. Zhivago." Note also that most of the adults are soused, there's an open can of beer, and why YES, that IS an ashtray perilously close to that small child!

Screw the alcohol and cigarettes, what I remember from our time with this family is the sheer amount of fun given off by their mother, our own Auntie Mame. She's gone now, and sadly, my parents lost touch with them after my father's first retirement, a move which jettisoned us away from the warmth of San Diego into the cold rain of Oregon. My parents never had any friends after that--well, my mother did, but we were never friends with any other families--hell, most of our relatives couldn't even stand us--and we never had get-togethers of music and fried chicken and blocks of ice cream cut with a knife to ensure equal portions again. I can still taste the drink of choice at these gatherings--Old Crow and Coke--and the sounds of Hank Williams and Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass make me joyful. Burt Bacharach is the soundtrack of my childhood, Dusty Springfield, my muse. I'm pretty sure this lovely laughing woman also baptized me as a Catholic--I have some dim memory of a secret trip to a church when quite young-- and I completely understand her reasons for doing so. Once in a while Mom reveals a little nugget about what was going on in those days, bits of secret information that was internalized as "sinful" and "shameful" but which was really just human. That family had their problems, we had ours, but when we got together--oh, what fun.

The final shot: I had two of these postcards, which I purchased about 15 years ago in Western China. I showed them to my students claiming they were both my boyfriends. Sadly, my students believed me and I'm pretty sure this is why the local government started leaving brochures at my house about how it's illegal for unmarried people to have "congress sexual or otherwise." (If only...) I am down to one postcard now, sadly battered and beaten and about as oily as the models themselves, but here goes: perhaps they will give you as much glee as they have afforded me for well over a decade...

Stacey's Mom isn't the only one who has got it going on!