Posts Tagged ‘Evelyn Duke’
Wednesday, March 18th, 2015
I was driving past my childhood home, my architectural symbol of security.
At the time, I didn’t own a house and had only purchased my first condo a year or so before. It was dark and depressing. Living in it was like living in Portland or Seattle – one of those places where it rains too much. I not only was sad, I had SAD. Seasonal Affective Disorder. It’s a condition that puts you in a bleak mood during the winter months when there isn’t enough sunlight. Only mine wasn’t seasonal. In this apartment, I had it all the time.
I’d just lost both my parents, a year apart. I shed so many tears while living in this condo I should have had flood insurance. But I really wanted to enjoy my first place with my first mortgage, even though the word mortgage was still so grown up and confusing. I hired the tile guy all my friends were using to hip the place up. Saltillo tiles. Trying to make it Spanish because this is the style I knew and loved, the style I grew up with. (more…)
Tags: chocolate pudding recipe, Evelyn Duke, fredde duke, Freddie Duke, Freddy Duke, getting even, growing up with divorced parents, Maurice Duke, men that didn't marry women, Mid Century Modern homes, parents, parents that remarried each other, Spanish homes, Spanish homes in Beverly Hills
Posted in Uncategorized | 8 Comments »
Wednesday, October 15th, 2014
A few months ago I unearthed an incredible photograph. I was searching through my mother’s one small album of photos and mementos, hunting for a letter I wrote as a kid that I thought she might have saved. I never found it, but hidden under a newspaper clipping was a picture I had never seen.
In it, my mother appears so happy, looking adoringly into the eyes of an unknown man. It was clear she had hidden the photo. A mystery. And I would never know the answer to it, had it not been for a chance encounter I had with a man 22 years ago. (more…)
Tags: Evelyn Duke, fredde duke, Freddy Duke Freddie Duke, Maurice Duke, my mother's former lover, Stumpy Brown, The last taping of The Tonight Show, The Les Brown Band, The Tonight Show starring Johnny Carson, Wolfgang Puck and Johnny Carson
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Saturday, September 21st, 2013
My mother had a lifelong, deep obsession with everything Mexican. I mean, obsessed. Is there a word for it? I looked it up just now and it’s Mexicophile.
We never knew where my mother’s fixation stemmed from. Perhaps, her Texas roots. She was raised on a small farm in Sweetwater. Or, could it have been the Spanish house she was so proud to own? My mother would wax poetic about every detail of my childhood home. The beamed ceilings. She could stare for hours at their beauty. The stained glass window. The tiles in the foyer. The black wrought-iron railing leading up the tiled staircase. The big bay window. Her pepper tree. Even the French doors were, to her, so very Mexican. Trust me, this woman was so proud of her two story, 3,500-square foot Spanish house you might have assumed she was the architect.
She was WAY ahead of her time in this Mexican love because these were the 1950’s and 60’s. Mexican Americans were not as ubiquitous as today, where every other Californian seems to have a Latin background. I just heard on NPR that in the 1700’s the first settlers in Los Angeles were Mexicans. My mom would have been in Mexican heaven, had she stayed in L.A. And, of course, had she not died so young. Today, she’d be all over the immigration law changes. (more…)
Tags: California, Evelyn Duke, fredde duke, Freddy Duke, General Rodruguez the cat, Guacamole recipes, Love of Mexicans, Mexican Americans, Mexicans, My mom's beloved cat, Ray Gonzalez, Ray Gonzalez Mariachi Band, Spanish homes in Beverly Hills
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Saturday, January 28th, 2012
The most memorable thing about the Friday night Y-Dances to me was Wendie Miller’s perfect flip. I don’t know why, because, to be honest, she wore that flip every single day to school. Okay, sometimes Wendie had just a simple — but thick — and also perfect ponytail. When Friday nights rolled around in the fall and those dances became the highlight of our week, I would long to achieve the Wendie Miller “do.”
My mother had gone to beauty school, so she knew her way around the current hairstyles, but makeup was more her specialty. She worked as assistant to George Masters, the famous makeup artist. Together, they did people like Ann-Margaret and Jackie Kennedy. But there I was, nearly a midget. (Sorry, I have always called myself that, even though it is not politically correct. Let’s pretend it’s still the 60’s. Midget. Shortest girl in my grade. Except maybe Susan Slutsky, who was a touch shorter. No, I’m not being politically incorrect again — her last name really was Slutsky.) (more…)
Tags: 1960's hair, calves liver recipe, Chris Head, Evelyn Duke, fredde duke, Freddie Duke, Freddy Duke, George Masters, the flip, The House of the Rising Sun, Twiggy and Beatles haircut, Y Dances in Beverly Hills
Posted in Recipes | 19 Comments »
Tuesday, December 20th, 2011
I was never walked into a temple. Never. Not by my dad, the Jew. I thought being Jewish meant eating lox, bagel & cream cheese in a deli. Because that’s what my dad, the non-religious Jew told me. When we ate at Nate n’ Al’s, he would announce loudly as he seemed to be pointing to the food, “We’re Jews!!!”
I sang with my friend Cindy Lou Carlson in her church for the Christmas pageant. Those rehearsals alone put me in a church more times than I was ever in a temple — at least until my kids and step-kids became B’nai Mitzvah.
I’m assuming my mom was some sort of Christian, but your guess is as good as mine. She never walked us into a church and never spoke of any religion. So, there you go, two parents – one gentile, one Jewish — who offered zero religious guidance. We called ourselves half-and-half. This was pretty commonplace in Beverly Hills, though each family would often choose a side and go to temple or church. Christmas or Chanukah.
We celebrated Christmas, tree and all. Show business was up and down and some years we had big-time gifts. The trees were bigger in those years. At other times we might have skimpy trees with few gifts.
One year, I scored. We all scored. My dad had a friend who had a TV show and he finagled a bunch of freebie popular toys of the day for us. I coveted Patty Play Pal. She’s all I ever wanted. I wonder if there were Chatty Cathy people and Patty Play Pal people. I just dug how big that doll seemed. I was little, so for me she was huge. That year, my mother got her new hi-fi and played it continuously Christmas day. Holiday paper and ribbon were strewn about as Bobby Darin belted “Mack the Knife.” And I got my big-ass doll — a new friend in my wonderful fantasy-filled life. My brother got shit he wanted. We had pogo sticks and stilts. We were a very happy family with a house filled-to-the-brim with every hot toy and gadget.
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(more…)
Tags: Alan Duke, augie duke, Chanukah for gentiles, Christmas in Beverly Hills, Evelyn Duke, fredde duke, Freddie Duke, Freddy Duke, Maurice Duke, Patty Play pal doll, recipe for play dough, Rutenbergs
Posted in Recipes | 11 Comments »
Friday, December 9th, 2011
Xmas in Palm Springs is like an oxymoron. The palm trees sway, the sun shines bright and it’s often hot and balmy. It’s where Beverly Hills families often went. Where some were lucky enough to have vacation/weekend homes.
We were lucky to “know” someone. My dad was always up for a freebie and one winter vacation we borrowed his friend Alan Freed’s house. Alan, the New York disc jockey known as “the father of rock & roll,” had in fact coined the phrase “rock and roll.” Poor Alan Freed. Sometimes when we were there to visit him and not on our own, I would make him sit and listen while I auditioned for him, singing the hit Allan Sherman camp song, “Hello Muddah, Hello Fadduh (Here I am at Camp Granada).” I was convinced I had a great voice, but in truth could not have been more off-key.
Hello Mudder Hello Fadder
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The Fishell family lived a few blocks away because they were one of the lucky ones who owned their own home in the desert. The Fishell girls were very grown up and popular. All the boys gravitated to them. My dad was a friend of their dad Dick, an older father like my own, with a hot, younger wife, also like mine. To be honest, my parents had been divorced for years, but we went everywhere together as a family. Very modern, way ahead of their time. Maybe no one even realized they were divorced.
The twins, Jeannie and Jackie Fishell were a year younger than me, in fifth grade, and Robin was my age and also in sixth. Every day we hung out as a large group of pre-teens. Robin was probably too mature for me so I hung out more with Jeannie and Jackie. At night we had spin the bottle parties with lots of boys who remember our peck of a kiss to this day. Like John Sofro who would later marry one of my BFF’s — Barbara Dudley. (more…)
Tags: Alan Freed, augie duke, Christmas in Palm Springs, Cody Clark, Dick and Mina Fishell, Evelyn Duke, fredde duke, Freddie Duke, Freddy Duke, matzo brei recipe, Maurice Duke, Palm Springs, sex talk, The birds and the bees, the Fishell twins
Posted in Recipes | 19 Comments »
Friday, May 13th, 2011
It’s a lifelong fear. If a therapist were to ask what is my level of discomfort when near a bee, I might have to say a hundred, or a gazillion- whatever the highest level might be.
It started when I was less then two, could have even been one and totally pre-verbal. But, I do remember being a witness to the moment. If not the exact moment, then the repurcussions. I was living with my mom and dad in this very glamorous place called the Garden of Allah. It was famous for housing the most intellectual, interesting avant -garde people of the day. People like F. Scott Fitzgerald, Dorothy Parker and Greta Garbo. It was a hotel with bungalows that some people took permanent residence in. The social center was the pool. The pool where my mother got stung on her back as she swam in it. It’s sort of contradictory that what I love so much, pools….is where the danger often lies.
Bees. I have been known to stay under the water for unsafe periods of time when I see a bee flying overhead. I even switched my swimming time to night to avoid the stress. (more…)
Tags: bushes in Beverly Hills, Evelyn Duke, fear of bees, fredde duke, Freddy Duke, fredrica duke, Garden of Allah, Haroset recipe, Malibu apartment, matza, Maurice Duke, Passover recipe, Susie Lohn
Posted in Recipes | 7 Comments »
Sunday, May 23rd, 2010
From the earliest possible memory, and I do mean earliest, my mother role-modeled the love of the underdog. Why, she married my father, a polio survivor, who sported a cane and brace and walked tilted from side to side. Think Danny DeVito, only slightly taller. My dad was all of 5 feet, one inch.
My mother took in strays, both people and animals. A famous gay makeup artist with a serious drug problem moved in for nearly a year. Each day that I left for high school, he asked me to score him some good dope. I always smiled and said “sure,” but never copped, not for him at least.
In retrospect, I’m thinking that I was an underdog. I was extremely tiny, with crossed eyes, so I had to wear those horrific cat glasses of the 1950’s. But I didn’t feel like any underdog. One day in grammar school, I watched, horrified, as all these nasty students surrounded the mentally-retarded girl and poked fun at her. I came home and related to my thin-skinned mother what had happened, and she lectured me, warning that it will never be me joining in. And it never was. I was almost always fighting for the underdog. Put up with no shit, that’s what I learned from both parents. That new show, “What Would You Do?” resonates with me because I’m the one who gets indignant in the face of injustice, and says something. It’s not always pretty either.
Some years ago, I kept noticing this homeless woman in my hood. I feared where my heart would lead me, so I looked away. I mean, for a few years I saw her out of the corner of my eye and knew that she tore at me, called to me, if you will…. But I wouldn’t touch it (or her). (more…)
Tags: Beverly Hills Hotel, Evelyn Duke, fredde duke, fredrica duke, homeless people, Maurice Duke, Nate n' Als deli, underdogs
Posted in Uncategorized | 14 Comments »
