Ida Lee &  Me

Tom Froehlich

“My name is Ida Lee and I’m ninety years old. Who the hell are you?!” That was how I met Ida Lee. She was a regular and long-standing member of the writing group I attended on Tuesday nights. 

Ida was writing a book about her adventures as a Los Angeles city cab driver.  Ida began driving cab when she was sixty-three while pursuing her acting career and continued to do so until they forced her into retirement at seventy-one.  Ida drove Hollywood celebrities and drug dealers from Compton.

She came from a small town in Texas. Her father was a cotton ginner.  She lived through prohibition, the civil rights movement and several wars.  When she was a child she almost died of whooping cough and her father was beaten and crippled for not joining the Klu Klux Klan.  None of these things changed Ida’s positive outlook and love of life and sense of adventure.  When she was nine years old Ida climbed to the top of a tall, tall tree in her family’s front yard and her momma yelled at her to get down before she fell down.  Ida said to me, “To this day I wonder why instead she didn’t ask me if I could see the creek from where I was. The creek was nearly a mile away. It was then I knew I just had to see the world!”

 Well Ida would one day see beyond that creek and more.  She grew up picking cotton from sun up to sunset until she graduated from high school and went to work in her cousin’s under garment factory.  Her cousin Rufus Love, the proud owner of Love Knit Undergarments.

Really Ida? You have a cousin named Rufus Love who owned an underwear factory named Love Knits?”

“Well he had to name it something now didn’t he?!”

I guess truth is in fact stranger than fiction!

Ida then married a man in the military and lived in France for several years. After France her husband was transferred back to the states and her family moved to south Florida. Her husband was a white officer in command of the only all black battalion in the army. It was 1951 and her second run in with the KKK.  Ida and her husband were having dinner one evening with the army doctor and his wife and they heard sirens that sounded like they were coming from the base where the black battalion was housed. Curious and always up for an adventure, Ida and the doctors wife went to investigate.  Within several blocks of the air force base they could already see the three crosses burning. Disgusted and angry, Ida spat, “I don’t know how anyone could be a member of the KKK!”

The doctor’s wife responded, “Well Ida, my husband is a member.”

Ida looked at her dismayed and said, “No.”

She went on to explain that if he wasn’t a member of the KKK he wouldn’t have been able to practice medicine in this part of the country.

It was then that Ida explained to me the circumstances under which her father was attacked years earlier.

Her father managed a cotton gin near Corpus Christi, where Ida said, “The cotton fields stretched further than the eye could see and I’ll tell you, in Texas that’s far!  He ran that cotton gin like nobody’s business.”

  But the cotton harvest season lasted only about three months. So her mother and father built a stand on the side of the road and sold fresh produce.  It finally got so big they built a general store.  And then they built an icehouse and added a gas station.

“Ice was a big thing in Texas in those days, let me tell you!” Ida said laughing. Her father was a real entrepreneur, doing quite well and in no time he was also the Briscole County Postmaster.  The KKK wanted to have all the successful businessmen and politicians under their thumb. One day three men came into the store and told Ida’s father it was time he joined their organization. He refused.

It was a few nights later Ida’s mother looked out the window and there was a cross on fire next to the gas pumps. While all that was going on someone snuck up behind her father at the cotton gin and hit him over the head with a 2 by 4.  He was never the same after that. Couldn’t run the cotton gin any more and with the hospital bills and all, they lost everything. 

That was when he decided to sell Wrigley’s chewing gum in Mexico.  Apparently chewing gum had just been invented and they weren’t selling it in Mexico quite yet and it was right across the border from Texas. Ida said, “My daddy was an entrepreneur. Nothing was going to stop him. Maybe that’s where I get it.”

You would think that growing up in south Texas in the 1920’s Ida would have some racist ideas, yet she doesn’t have a racist bone in her 92 year old body.  You see her father was an immigrant farmer from Germany at the turn of the century. He worked in the fields with former slaves and those slaves taught her father to speak English. “My daddy wouldn’t have tolerated racism! You don’t show hatred to folks that are kind!”  And Ida returns that sort of kindness and acceptance to all that she meets.

Early on in Ida’s acting career she was in the film “Vegas in Space” which consisted of an all gay cast except for yup, you guessed it! Ida Lee as “women at party”.  She talks about how honored she was that these kind and talented men not just allowed her, but welcomed her into the cast. The night of the premier Ida arrived in a limousine with a somewhat more conservative friend. When the movie was over and the credits rolled the man who had been seated in front of them rose to his feet applauding enthusiastically, wearing nothing but a pair of black leather chaps. Ida’s companion looked at her in shock.  Ida just looked at her friend and said, “Well, I guess he enjoyed the film!”

Ida told me these stories one night when we were the only two who showed up for our writing group.  She had brought yet another chapter of her memoir to share. As she said, “Hell! I better write it down before I forget it!” 

I walked Ida to her car, Ida said, “See you next week sweetie. I have company coming, but I think they’ll be gone by Tuesday.”

“God willing Ida. God willing,” I said meaning hopefully her company wouldn’t overstay their welcome.

“What?! You think I’m gonna die before then?! I told you, I got company coming. Got no time for that!” she said with a grin as she climbed behind the wheel of her car and drove off.

Ida has taken a ride on the Orient Express and taken a slow boat to China. She has been to nearly 40 countries.

This year on her 92^nd birthday Ida went on a cruise to Alaska and went spent a day on a crab fishing boat. Crab fishing is considered the most dangerous profession of in the world.  I scolded her and said, “Ida! What in the world were you thinking? That’s incredibly dangerous!”

She responded, “Well I guess I was thinking I may not make it to 93 so if I want to go crab fishing I better go now!”

Her name is Ida Lee and I am honored that she is my friend. She’s lived through prohibition, the civil rights movement and several wars. And more than 80 years ago she climbed a tree in her front yard in south Texas and was able to see the creek miles away.  Ida wasn’t afraid of falling. She had too much to see, and she still does.

Knowing Ida has changed me and challenged me. Challenged me as I now challenge you. To find your tree. And climb it. Climb it to the very top and look off into the horizon see your dreams. And dreams are not seen with the eye. But with your heart.  I have learned that from my friend…my friend, Ida Lee.

Frosted Like Powder Sugar Doughnuts

                                                          Tom Froehlich

I overheard her say, “Yea, I moving to Vermont and going to a school on a farm”.  Her enthusiasm was infectious and I wanted to be a part of it. Know more about this adventure to the land of autumn leaves and maple syrup. I wanted to know if the farmhouse had clapboard siding or was made of rough hewn stone and if there would be fresh apple pies cooling on a red checked cloth covering a chipped enamel farm table in the kitchen.  

I smiled to myself realizing I was creating my own reality for her adventure. This girl who I later learned had never been out of the state of California and had never experienced a frosty fall morning, the soon to be dormant grass frosted like powder sugar doughnuts.  Autumn leaves of sienna and umber rustling in there own private waltz bidding farewell to clear autumn days.  I wanted to share with her the experiences I have had in climates less temperate than those of southern California.  Share in the excitement of her new adventure to a land foreign to her California roots.  Yet I was hesitant. I was unsure if I would be welcomed into her pending reality.  Fearful it would appear an invasion rather than sharing in the comradeship of adventure. Years previously, I made the same journey in the opposite direction, the sun and palm trees and Santa Anna winds as foreign to me as the wooded forests, rolling green hills and fresh spring rains pounding out their rhythm on the raftered farmhouse roof would be to her. 

I replaced the book I had been reading on the shelf and turned to leave the bookstore thinking of the excitement and anticipation of my own migration. I was reminded of people’s queries and how they had fueled my own excitement, making my adventure seem that much more real. More tangible. Imminent.  Never an intrusion.  Merely an affirmation that I was about to set out on an adventure they may wish to travel if only through conversation and a sharing of wanderlust.

Before leaving I stopped, turned and said with a smile, “Excuse me. I didn’t mean to eaves drop, but I heard you are moving to a farm in Vermont and it sounds amazing.”

With out a moment’s hesitation she turned to me and said, “Yes. I’m going to learn to teach English as a second language and then have a teaching job in Europe. I am soooo excited. I’ve never been out of the state of California.”

“It will be beautiful in Vermont.  I hope you have an amazing adventure.”

Her smile continued to beam as she thanked me for asking.

As I was leaving the bookstore I was drawn to a display of books on a table and began to browse.  A few minutes passed and I heard a voice say, “I just wanted to thank you again for asking me about my trip.  That was so kind of you.”

“Thank you for allowing me to be a part of your adventure.” I said.

I later walked out into the sunny California afternoon still sharing in this stranger’s journey.  I smiled as I thought of how her own smile had become more radiant when I asked her about her trip.  How my curiosity had fueled her own enthusiasm and wanderlust.

I realized that joy is not an emotion one should be reluctant to share nor share in. Joy has no limits.  No finite mass. Joy feeds on itself exponentially. It is a bottomless, blissful artesian well to be shared with no fear of depletion.

I will remember this day often and smile.  Smile wondering if this stranger, a stranger who’s wanderlust I share, is breakfasting on buckwheat pancakes and fresh maple syrup, safe and warm in her farmhouse as the winter winds remind her of the sunny California days of my own adventure.  Smile, remembering how a stranger taught me that joy is meant to be shared.

We Came to Live Out Loud

                                                        Tom Froehlich

In the words of Emile Zola, “If you ask me what I came into this world to do, I will tell you: I came to live out loud.”  These words will always remind me of my Uncle Bud.  Yet to say he is merely my uncle is not only an inaccuracy, but also an injustice.  You see, he is the person who taught me to live out loud.  To him, it didn’t matter if you were five years old or seventy-five, what mattered was if you laughed until you cried and if you saw the joy and humor in simple things.   One of the smartest guys I know, he would often laugh and say, “Hell, no one’s going to accuse me of my humor being sophisticated. I don’t give a shit, as long as it’s funny!”  And he didn’t.  Give a shit that is. 

When we were kids we would torment him until he would remove himself from the adults and chase us through the house, pinning our shoulders to the floor with his grown up knees giving us "shoulder rubs" or rubbing his big knuckles into our scalps giving us "peanuts".  Now days this may be considered child abuse, but we came back for more each and every time.   He taught us songs such as "Sam, Sam the Lavatory Man", and "In the Shade of the Old Model T", much to my mothers dismay, scolding him saying, "Now Bud, stop it, you're awful", yet she would laugh right along with us. 

Several years after I told my family I was gay I finally asked my uncle how he felt about it.  “He asked if I wanted the truth.  I said, “Hell yes, if I wanted a load of bull shit I wouldn’t have asked.”

His eyes held mine as he said, “You know, at first all I did was feel sorry for your parents, thinking how devastated I would have been if it was one of my kids.  But then I started thinking about it and I realized I never really knew any gay people and then realized what an idiot I was for thinking that.  Hell, I had no idea you were gay!  So I realized what I thought of gays all along must be wrong.  What it comes down to Tom, is you’re still one of the funniest fuckers I know and I don’t really give a shit who you are sleeping with.  Just spare me the details!” he said with a wink.  “I love you and am proud you are my nephew.” 

We never needed to talk about it again because I knew he spoke his truth.  He had little time for bullshit. He is my Uncle and he came into this world to live out loud.

When I listened to the message on my voice mail I didn’t think much of it, other than it was far shorter than the monologue my mother typically leaves, not really grasping the concept that voice mail is not meant for a dissertation but to leave a few quick words.  The thing is, my mom always has so many important and apparently timely things to share that she must report them immediately if not sooner.  I love her for that.  Very much the same as her not being able to wait to present Christmas gifts early as she had them shopped, wrapped and tied in a bow since before labor day.  These gifts were also on a list so she would know which was a small “filler” gift as opposed to one of the “biggies”. She also had a list for all meat kept in the freezer. Each time she closed the freezer doors having retrieved a package wrapped in white butcher paper, she would open the adjacent kitchen cabinet and cross the item off the list attached to the inside of the door.  In the very same way she kept track of her very important and timely things to share. These things may often be read directly from one of her many lists she continually updated to keep her and everyone else’s life in order.  But instead she said, “Honey, it’s mom. Call me as soon as you get this message.”   No list was necessary.

When I called she didn’t even say hello.  She merely gasped between pending tears, “: Your uncle was taken on the flight tor life to the hospital. He’s had an aneurism.  The doctors said the surgery is very risky and he may die on the operating table, but if they don’t operate he will die for sure.”

In disbelief I asked, “You mean they are going to cut open his brain?”

She answered, “Yes”.

A torrent of sobs overcame me as I gasped, “Mom, I don’t know what to do.”  I live 2500 miles away in California.

“Honey, there is nothing you can do but pray”, she said. “ I will call when I have more news.”  Now I dread the sound of the phone ringing.  I turn off the ringer so just the flashing light will alert me to an incoming call.  It just seemed a gentler way to prepare for news. 

My uncle is my mom’s brother. Yet to say he is merely her brother is not only an inaccuracy, but an injustice. They were the best of friends, making each other laugh until they cried and yes, even at times till my mother may or may not have had an accident, which merely made the two of them laugh that much harder.  He would tell his off color jokes and she would feign lack of understanding, yet calling him vulgar and a pig unable to wipe the knowing grin off of her face.  He would retort, “Well you simple shit, even the village idiot would understand that one!”, him wearing a similar grin unable to mask the love and joy of spending time with his sister.  Trust me, the words “simple shit” have never, or ever will be said with such uncompromised joy and love.

It hadn’t always been just the two of them, but forty years ago their sister took her own life.  It was in the days before they had the diagnoses or the medical treatment for bi-polar disorder.  After suffering that great loss they were determined that we all knew the importance of family.  And they did.  As our grandmother always said, “There isn’t an ill wind that doesn’t blow someone some good.” Not that we all wouldn’t wish that is was different, but you take what life throws your way and deal with it as best you can, my mom would say.

My uncle survived the surgery and my mom and I were in contact at least daily giving me progress reports.  The surgery had gone well, but he was still unconscious.  My mom called me a week after the surgery and said, “It doesn’t look good, honey,” through shameless tears.  My heart broke for her.  We had lost my dad three years ago and my uncle was her rock.  Being childless, I now know what it must feel like to want to take away the pain from someone you love and there is nothing you can do.  You feel helpless as if they are falling into an open abyss and you don’t even reach out your arms to help them because you know they are going to a place in their heart you can never understand.  I just tell her I love her and hang up the phone.

I called her the next morning to ask how my uncle was doing.  She said, “I’m in the hospital honey.”

I responded, “Yes, I know, how is he doing?”

She said, “No, you don’t understand, I’m in the hospital, they think I had a heart attack.  The ambulance came early this morning.  I was going to drive myself, but then I figure if I croaked behind the wheel I may take out an innocent by-stander and that just didn’t seem right.  But I told them I didn’t want any of those damn lights or sirens.  I didn’t need all of the neighbors wondering what in the hell was going on.”   I wondered if it had occurred to her that those lights and sirens might buy the EMTs extra time they may need to ensure her well-being.  I mentioned this and she informed me she doesn’t need everyone knowing her business.  This from a woman who tells me, unsolicited mind you, every time she has an unusual bowel movement and has an ironing board cover with a twenty-something stud muffin air-brushed seductively across it, naked except for a towel covering his loins.  A couple sweeps across the towel with a hot iron and said stud is wearing nothing but a smile.  She distributes these to other octogenarian women in the neighborhood.  This is the woman who wants to maintain some privacy. 

She cheerfully informs me that they think it may have been an anxiety attack and they’ll know after a few tests. 

To say she is merely my mom is not only an inaccuracy, but also an injustice, for we are the best of friends.  When my dad past away she said, “Honey, you’re going to have to teach me how to be single.  I haven’t been single for over fifty years and you seem to do it pretty well.  Oh! And don’t worry about me getting married again, cause at my age all they want is a nurse or a purse and some old fart isn’t getting my money and I sure as hell am not going to be his nurse.”

Yea, that’s my mom. She has taught me to love and to laugh.  We have laughed until we have both had accidents and laughed even harder.  She has taught me to be strong and laugh in the face of adversity.  In her words, “Honey, we had better laugh, cause we look like shit when we cry.” She has taught me to live out loud.

I understand the circle of life, I’ve seen “The Lion King” for Christ sake, so you spare me your platitudes.  All I know is I love these people with all my heart and I will miss them.  They have loved me and shaped me and helped me become the person I am today and if you ask us what we came into this world to do, we will tell you, “We came to live out loud”.

Colored Dots

Tom Froehlich

I once read somewhere about how life is a lot like the illustrations in a comic book.  When you look at a page from reading distance you see Superman leaping tall buildings in a single bound and Batman’s fist connecting with the Jokers jaw and a bubble that says KAPOW!!!. But when you look really, really close all you see are hundreds of tiny little colored dots. It’s only when you hold the comic book further away and the dots almost magically connect that you see the actual picture. The picture that tells us the entire story.  When I think of life like that, it somehow seems to make more sense. 

It’s as if all of life’s experiences, good and bad, are just a colored dot.  Granted, I prefer the happy, joyous, magical dots, but when the tough lesson-filled dots come along I do my best to learn and understand. It’s as if my higher power is saying, “Dammit, you’re not listening again and now I’m going to have to do something really shitty to get your attention cause it’s time to move forward and being nice about it just ain’t workin'!” Yes, my higher power and I share a vulgar vocabulary. It’s just the way we roll.

One day I applied that philosophy to my life and how I ended up in Venice, California. It wasn’t so much about how I drove here or what brought me to making that decision, but more about the seemingly unrelated major events in my life that lead me here.  These are the tiny colored dots that mapped my journey to sunny California.

Twenty years ago I fell in love for the one and only time in my life. I will always remember a night in early November when we had first started dating. We went back to my apartment after seeing a movie.  Simultaneously we looked out the living room window and saw the first snowflakes of the season floating by. They were those big heavy flakes that seem to get caught up in a current and retrace their path, swirling in slow motion just like in the movies.  Burrowing his hands deeper into the pockets of his black leather jacket, he looked me and said, “Honey, would you do something with me and promise not to laugh.”  He looked so brave and vulnerable and if I hadn’t already been in love with him, it would have happened right then and there.

“Sure, whatever you want,” I responded.

Hesitantly he whispered, as if saying it quietly made it not such a great risk, “Would you go for a walk in the snow with me and hold my hand?”

I froze for an imperceptible moment and then left the room because I felt the beginnings of unexpected tears pooling from this unexpected invitation.  When I walked back in he asked, “What? Did I say something wrong? We don’t have to if you don’t want to.”

“No. It’s just I have been waiting my whole life for a guy to ask me that question.” Yes, I know it’s a bit Deborah Kerr and Burt Lancaster in, “From Here To Eternity”, but that’s how it panned out.

I slipped my hand into his and we stepped out onto the sidewalk marking our path in the new fallen snow just as a single tear marked its path on Jason’s cheek, blending with the flakes that had fallen from his golden lashes.

Nauseating, right?  I know, but that’s who we were.  And it was amazing. And it was magic. It was a real life Fairy Tale and yes, the pun was intentional. But to quote, “A Tale of Two Cities”, “they were the best of times, they were the worst of times.” Jason had a problem with his temper and I seemed to be a natural at setting it off.  Like the time he slapped me because I refused to get into the car with him when he wanted to drive drunk. Unreasonable things like that. The end.

There didn’t seem to be enough beer in Milwaukee, the home for the German beer barons, to fill the void inside of me.  I spent the next year getting drunk and sharing my woes with anyone who would listen or who were at least within earshot.

My friends began threatening to deafen themselves with ice picks if the retelling of this romantic tragedy alone didn’t result in them bleeding from their ears. The story was getting old and beginning to bore even me.  So in an effort to heal my heart and save the sanity of my friends I enrolled in pottery classes at the university.  Anyone who knows me would never say I am not obsessive. I threw myself into throwing pots like a mad man.  And I was good at it. Eighteen months later my instructor and now friend, Geralyn, asked me to open up a pottery studio with her, which we did. Murray Hill Pottery Works, became the largest for profit pottery studio in the Midwest and possibly the country.  This wasn’t so much by the virtue of our talents and business acumen, but due to the fact that 95% of the pottery studios in the country were non-profit and received funding because it was very difficult to actually make a profit in that arena.  Hence we were one of the few for profit studios period.

We were the true definition of non-profit and if anyone wanted to take a look at our books they would see just how true that was. Evidence of our lack of business savvy can still be found in Geralyn’s attic.  It is a brown envelope containing receipts from a variety of purchases for the studio, sealed shut and rubber banded, labeled “Petty Cash Problem”. We were never able to wrap our brains around how to write a check to reimburse the studio for purchases when it was the studios money from the studios account we were reimbursing it with. Hence the envelope, the rubber band and Geralyn’s attic.  But it was a great experience. We held classes and art shows and had a small gallery. The studio became an east side social hub.

That was how I met Deb. She was one of my students. She didn’t have a lot of talent, but that didn’t really matter as she was more there for the sociability. Her dream was to open an English garden shop, with imported tools and sculpture and garden antiques and a library where people could come and sit on overstuffed, faded sofas smelling of dust mites and read about gardening.  And then she inherited ten million dollars. Yes, you heard me right. Ten million smackers.  To her it looked like, as it would to many, enough to open that garden shop.  Deb had been to my house and admired my taste.  She respected my knowledge of pottery and needed a buyer. She asked me if I would go to England to do some shopping. These are the kind of invitations in life you just say “Yes,” to. I had a budget of a cool million. I know. Crazy? Right? So off we went to the land of fish and chips and Wellington garden boots.

I bought British garden sheds in soft butterfly colors of dusty blue and pale yellow and abstract soapstone sculptures from Indonesia. I bought lacquered antique Chinese garden stools and baroque Italian urns made in terra cotta standing six feet tall.  I bought anything and everything that was beautiful and whimsical and magical and at times even practical.  I helped her create what came to be known as the finest garden shop in the Midwest.  People traveled from Chicago one hundred fifty miles away just to shop at The Garden Room.

The store opened in the fall and in December we flew to Los Angeles for the annual Home & Garden Show.

.  We stayed at a craftsman bed and breakfast on the beach that had been the summerhouse of, Abbot Kinney, the founder of Venice, California. Standing on the porch I watched as the menagerie of people that make Venice Beach, Venice Beach, walk, bike and skate past.  A man with a crew cut, wearing cut off denim shorts and an orange bikini top bearing the weight of a couple of ample and generous breast implants roller bladed by and I thought, “This is a place you can be whoever you want to be and no one gives a damn. This is a place to reinvent yourself.”  On the way home from dinner that evening we walked past cottages sparkling with Italian lights reflected in the water of the canals Venice is known for. They may have cost $8.99 at Home Depot, but it was magic to me.  I think you find magic whenever you look for it and I am usually looking. Two years later I sold everything I owned, bought a Saab convertible and drove west.

So you see, if twenty years ago I had never fallen in love with Jason and been heart broken I would never have taken pottery classes and opened a pottery studio and met Deb and opened a garden shop with her that took me on a business trip to Venice California.  I’m not saying that I’m happy about having been heart broken, but I am happy about being here and I don’t know that it would have happened with out the heartbreak.  Besides, the falling in love part was pretty great. All of those events and people and experiences are the little colored dots that make up my life and if I remember to take a step back it all seems to make a bit more sense.

Certainly there are those who simply believe that crappy things just happen in life and we have to deal with them. Let them believe that. I prefer to think they happen to push us forward so we can make our dreams come true. Let the cynics think what they will. I don’t have time for that. I’m busy stepping back connecting the dots.