Celluloid Children

Ron Jones’ new book Airman, arrived in the mail recently, with a note from Ron that SUN readers would like the chapter called “Celluloid Children.” So I’m reprinting it — I agree with him — and I’m looking forward to reading the rest of the book, described as a “true life adventure about the National Guard, high school teaching, communist spies, and a ’53 Chevy with red rims.”

In 1972, Ron, a teacher and writer who lives in San Francisco, founded the Zephyros Educational Exchange, a non-profit group of parents, teachers and artists that write, print and distribute their own teaching materials. He self-publishes all his own books initially; several weeks prior to the printing of Airman, he realized he didn’t have the print money. “In fact, I needed $2000,” he writes. “I decided to ask one hundred friends for 20 dollars each to publish Airman. . . . Suddenly, there was no need to go to a New York publisher for approval. Or ask some foundation for a grant. I found out that all that’s needed to give flight to a book is a ‘company of friends’ willing to wear twenty dollar wings. It’s to these ‘Book Angels’ that I give my thanks. They are of a future where there will be more books by more people.”

— Ed.

A black sun crossed the sky. No one noticed. We were on our way to a firing range. It was enjoyable, this caravan into the coastal hills. We were finally doing something. Going someplace. Far better than wasting hours with “silly war” against the MPs or trying to find a place to hide.

I was telling Sunny about Tech Prep and the graduation party. He hung his arms out the back of the truck clutching at air. Cars that rolled past us honked. And Sunny waved. It felt good, men jostling down a forbidden road. Past cavernous gun emplacements that once housed the “defense of San Francisco Bay.”

We were going to play guns. In childhood it was a journey we had practiced a thousand times, witnessed in countless darkened theaters. We were Foreign Legionnaires, mounted U.S. Cavalry, space patrol, all the ships at sea. We were the celluloid children of Red Ryder, Tom Mix, the Lone Ranger, Buck Rogers, Don Winslow of the Coast Guard, and John Wayne.

“Japs hide in treetops, don’t they?” That’s what Bobby Rivera said as he climbed the billboard outside the Surf Theater. Bobby’s the one who saved my pants and got me off the Golden Gate Bridge, which saved my life. He was always in trouble, usually getting me out of trouble. And always looking for that ’53 Chevy of his. “Now, shoot me — go ahead!” Bobby was straddling the top of the billboard. “Go ahead, shoot!”

Powerhouse Hancock and I ran a weaving pattern to avoid the machine gun bursts of Bobby. Then we aimed our tommy guns and fired. Bobby Rivera was hit. He clutched his stomach with both hands. And somersaulted off the top of the billboard. Landed with one arm sticking into the iceplant. Broke it in three places. We laughed at him, sticking there in the ground. That’s what happens to Japs who hide in trees. Or Indians behind rocks. That’s what happens to Japs and Indians!

Rolling hills served as a backstop at the firing range. In the afternoon light these hills appeared as golden waves against a gray sky. Seagulls circled the range. It was their home, this seldom-used thing of the past. They spiralled downward as we jumped from the trucks. Squawked at us for invading their nest.

Methodically we were issued automatic rifles and ammunition clips. The clips slapped into place with a locking click. Lying down, we raised sights and shouldered these metal spears. It was all so orderly. All of us lying there, poised. Waiting. Waiting for Japs and Indians. Waiting for the word.

“Commence firing.” The racket set the seagulls to flight. The targets some fifty yards away burst at the concussion of our silver bullets.

Then, without any order, the firing was directed at the flight of birds. The white and gray creatures dove in confusion. Others clamored with a rapid beating of their wings to peel away. The firing continued. It raked the sky of birds. Survivors tried to break from the pack. Their flight drew cannonades of fire. The seagulls didn’t fall to the ground; they exploded in the air.

I looked at Sunny. He gently placed his gun on the ground. California Red was shooting and laughing at the carnage overhead. I froze, horrified. With one round of fire, men who moments ago were talking about football and buying stereos, men who had families waiting for their return from weekend duty, men whose company I enjoyed, whose skill as carpenters and masons I respected, men you see on the street every day, work next to, joke with at the office, men who play with their children and dress in funny hats at costume parties, men who take out the garbage and fix the toilet, men who select the right Christmas tree — these good men were killing seagulls. Shooting seagulls, Japs, Indians, outlaws, freaks, reds. Killing anything that moved. It was life itself being extinguished.

“Don’t bring a gun in this house. There will be no guns in this house!”

My grandmother was adamant. I unbuckled my holster and placed the cap shooters on her doorstep.

“That’s better,” she offered.

Grandma lived down the block from our home on 46th Avenue. So I could visit her a lot. And I did, as often as possible. My mother used to call me “Grandma’s boy” — and it was true.

Grandparents are fortunate. They are distant enough to be parents but also friends. And teachers. My grandmother was all of these. She was a petite woman who always wore an apron and was always having a cup of coffee. Grandma hated to have her picture taken and never talked about herself. She would, however, sit and talk about all manner of other things. She called it “kibitzing.” So we would sit for hours, visiting and playing Chinese checkers. She could beat the tar out of me at checkers.

She smoked Chesterfields, and on occasion she’d let me go to the store and get her cigarettes. I’d run to the store as fast as possible and tell Carl Grandma’s instructions — “just put the carton on the tab.” I followed Grandma around like a puppy. When she turned to the dishes, I’d tie her apron strings in a knot. She’d threaten me with a switch she kept on top of the bureau. “Ronald Jones, I’m going to get me that switch if you don’t untie that knot!”

Grandma was the black sheep of the wealthy Matson family because she married “Pop” Calof a Jew. Their life together was a trail of poverty lighted by Pop’s eternal dreams. He had style. Always dressed in the best pin-stripe suit with a red rose in the lapel. And plans. Always plans to “make it.” He was in the curtains of show business. Had the idea to sell popcorn in “legit” movie houses before concessions were thought of. All he wanted was the “popcorn trade.” The vaudeville and movie managers thought it unlikely and “inappropriate” for people to watch a show and eat — especially popcorn. So pop watched as another of his ideas became a big business. And Grandma watched and cared after this giant of a man she had married. This dreamer. This dreamer waving his cigars like wonderful flags and flashing his diamond ring. This kindly man who lived a life of “almosts.”

Grandma was a person of the Middle Kingdom. The center of civilized life. With one hand she propped up a star-gazer, and with the other she reached down to the bowels of life to offer a hand to the lost and bewildered. My mother told me stories of Grandma’s being the only one capable of going into the opium dens in Chinatown and pulling out “lost” relatives and friends. She was short and brassy and simply marched in where no one else would enter.

Pop managed burlesque houses in North Beach and Chinatown in San Francisco. He was known and loved on the street as a soft touch for a handout. Grandma was known on the streets as the Salvation Army. Now that I think about her and try to describe her, I’m amazed at how simple this should be. It was in her name. All along it was right there. Grandma’s name was Grace.

Everyone called on Grace for help. She always had time to talk with someone having “their troubles.” Although her home was small, she had a downstairs room where visitors could stay if they needed a place. One visitor stayed for twelve years. He came back from World War II “shell-shocked,” whatever that meant. This visitor was a man without a family, so she took him in. He was a tall, gawky man with “little meat on his bones” and dark eyes set into caves. His ears were flappy and large, which seemed a contradiction to the fact that he had great trouble hearing.

Grandma called him Willie. And so did I. “Willie, come on up here and get yourself something to eat and help me untie this apron.” She’d stamp on the floor and repeat her song, “Willie, come on up here and have a cup of coffee.” Then she’d smile at me. “Like all of us, he hears what he wants to hear.”

I was eight at the time. And nine, ten, and then eleven. And I remember Willie and Grandma as my best friends, along with Bobby Rivera and Powerhouse. Willie was with MacArthur in the Pacific, in fact landed with him in the Philippines. In many ways Willie was still fighting the war. His knotty pine room was covered with newspaper articles and magazine photographs of wartime operations. He had lived the fantasies of a nine-year-old. Knew all about Zeroes and P-38s and the Flying Fortress.

Willie often played checkers with Grandma and me, and when we weren’t talking or playing checkers, we were having coffee with one of Grandma’s callers. All the salesmen who walked the postwar Sunset District, the residential area where we lived, stopped at Grandma’s for coffee. One of these callers I’ll never forget. He was an Irishman who spoke through his bushy mustache, and every now and then his Irish tongue would get away from his salesman’s mind. Of all the salesmen who came, he was the only one that Willie would talk with. With all the other visitors Willie sat petrified.

The Irish salesman was named Myron. “Not exactly an Irish name, now is it?” he’d joke. In fact, he told the same joke on every weekly visit. Myron sold brushes of all sizes. Grandma always bought one. “It’s for the trip to Ireland,” she’d say. Then she’d put the broom or brush in the closet with the empty Wizard Wick bottles. Once this nicety was played out, Myron would sit down and “join us for a cup.”

Myron was the neighborhood historian. He knew all about the latest children to be born and the deaths. About the fights and the squabbles and the “makin’ up.” About “those that cut their grass and those that don’t bother,” and “those that be leavin’ their garbage cans out on the walkway.” In many ways he was the keeper of the neighborhood, and my grandmother was his ally. On one visit he set off a chain of events that I’ll remember for a long time.

“I think there’s a problem with Mrs. Mercheson, you know the lady I’m talkin’ about, on the corner there. Well, now, I think somethin’ is wrong.”

As was the practice, once Myron started talking there was little room for Grandma or Willie or me, so we listened.

“I’ve been calling on her now for, let’s see, ten years — yes, that’s it, doesn’t seem that long — and, you know, I take her kit along with me, keep her in food, that darlin’ and her dog.”

We looked at Myron and didn’t have to beckon for him to continue. “So the last few times I’ve been by the house, you know, there’s nay been an answer, don’t even hear the dog barking, so I think the two of us should go over and look things over. You know, she’s a frightened woman behind those bars of hers and, well now, Grace, you and me, we’re the only ones she’s about to talk with.”

Grandma motioned for Willie to come along with her and Myron. She asked me to stay and “watch the house.” Myron was continuing to talk as the three of them moved down the stairs to the street below. “Now my worst of fears is that the poor soul is dead, dead away, or about to get that way.”

I watched as they disappeared down the street. Then went immediately to the basement. I peeked into Willie’s room. It was a rare chance to see where this man lived. And all his photographs of airplanes and tanks.

The best part of the basement, however, was under the front stairs. This is where Grandpa stored his dreams. There were always boxes of stuff and sometimes great treasures. I cherished the piles of glossy photos that were part of Grandpa’s burlesque business. They were always on the bottom of some cardboard box.

On this day I opened a box of unexpected pleasure. The box contained what must have been one of Grandpa’s “almosts.” There were hundreds of them. Tiny pink and blue telescopes — only instead of stars, the image inside the eyepiece was a naked woman. Pure delight! The telescopes even had little chains, little gold chains — I guess Grandpa figured he could snap them onto a numbers board or put them in the popcorn as prizes. Or snap them on the beltloop of your trousers. Whatever went wrong with this dream, I applauded it. Jesus. Just look into the light and then turn the little devil, and the girl moves. I scooped up a handful of the trinkets, hoping to find a different girl in each window. A harem. Each scope had the same fascination. It didn’t matter. She was beautiful. Better than any National Geographic “finds” by Bobby Rivera. I couldn’t wait to take my discovery to school.

I dug deeper into the box. There, on the bottom of the box, was something shiny. Not the glossies I had expected, but something shiny. And scary. It was partially wrapped in a handkerchief; I knew what it was immediately. A revolver. A real gun. Nickel-plated, with a white pearl handle. And bullets. I could see them sticking inside the chamber. I had never seen a real bullet before. They were snub-nosed, not pointed like I expected, and the end seemed soft, like clay or solder.

I handled the gun carefully, tested its weight in my hand. Aimed across the basement at the washing machine — and pretended to shoot its legs off. Grandma’s words haunted me: “I won’t have any guns in this house.” I wondered if she knew about this. I covered the gun with the handkerchief and placed it back in the box. Then I nervously refilled the box with its cargo of tiny peeper scopes.

It turns out that Myron’s fears about Mrs. Mercheson were premature. Mrs. Mercheson just refused to open the gate for Myron and as usual had not picked up her papers. Myron’s concern for the old lady, however, resulted in my grandmother and me making weekly pilgrimages to her home. Grandma conditioned me not to be afraid and “don’t be quick to criticize,” that “Mrs. Mercheson has lived on this block longer than anyone can remember and once had family and friends. But now she just lives quietly and watches the world through her front window.” My Grandma was right.

We stood ringing Mrs. Mercheson’s doorbell for twenty minutes. When the buzzer finally sounded, we pushed open the gate and went up the stairs. Mrs. Mercheson was waiting for us at the slightly opened door. She saw us and asked who we were. Grandma reassured her we were Myron’s friends, and the final chain lock was unfastened.

On the outside her home was similar to Grandma’s, but inside was a sight I had never seen or smelled. The house was filled with garbage. There were trails cutting through the refuse that led from the door to the kitchen, down the hall to what I guessed was the bathroom. Mrs. Mercheson’s dog was barking. The sound came from the living room. But I couldn’t see in that room because the door was closed. The dog scratched against the door as Mrs. Mercheson glided to the dinette table and vinyl chairs. From this vantage point she could watch out the window. The venetian blinds were tilted to vent in the light and movement from the sidewalk below. She just sat there looking at us, while Grandma unloaded the boxes of cereal like the ones Myron had been delivering for years.

As she placed the boxes of Quaker Oats on the table, Grandma told Mrs. Mercheson “how nice out it is today” and “did she remember meeting Ronald, this is my grandson.” And “Did you know that Myron was finally going to return home, to Ireland, that he would be back on his route for the last time, and wants to stop by and not to worry because Myron has arranged for me to stop in once a week and make sure everything is all right.”

Mrs. Mercheson didn’t say a word. Her hands were gnarled and her hair danced outward. Red splotches covered her face. One eye looked closed. The other wandered around in constant search for something. I turned away as she noticed my stare. “The dog — ” I questioned Grandma, asking if the dog was all right, and Mrs. Mercheson slapped her own face, dug her nails into her cheek. Then she murmured, “Can’t trust anyone. The mailman tried to get in today. I saw him, yes.”

Grandma reached into her purse and took out the bundle of news circulars and advertisements that had been stuck in Mrs. Mercheson’s gate. She placed them next to the cereal boxes. The old woman picked them up and ran with them — opened the door where the barking came from and threw them in. Then slammed the door. The dog started barking again. “Insects, they’re covered with insects. Didn’t you see them, the mailman, those children are always running, ringing the door — didn’t you see? Insects crawling all over.”

Grandma walked with me slowly back to her white stucco house with the rose bushes out front and the clean carpets and furniture. She knew what was on my mind. “Myron has been taking care of Mrs. Mercheson for years, the best way he can. He is her only contact with the outside. She won’t take help, and she is sure that someone is trying to kill her. She and her dog live there, it’s a god-awful mess, isn’t it? All she’ll eat, her and the dog, is that cereal. That’s the smell. It’s terrible. Myron is worried that when he leaves she won’t let anyone in.”

Myron was right. He stayed for months trying to wean Mrs. Mercheson of her dependence on his calls. He and Grandma took weekly walks to the old woman’s home, then daily visits. She wouldn’t let them in. They stood beneath her window with the bags of cereal boxes. She could see them and they could see her pinch open the blinds and then close them.

It was a drama that took over our life. Willie, Grandma, and Myron tried leaving packages, but they went untouched. They tried getting the police to enter the home and at least leave some food, but the police refused — they couldn’t enter a home without signs of a crime or a warrant. Myron talked to a judge and then the local social service office. The social worker agreed to open a case for Mrs. Mercheson, but to initiate this action, Mrs. Mercheson would have to give her a call. Myron tried the local SPCA. The agency wanted to help the dog but needed some verification of mistreatment. Everyone contacted agreed that something could be done but “it would take time.”

My visits to Grandma’s became acts of frustration. The gun I had found in the basement was missing when I wanted to show it to Bobby Rivera. He didn’t seem to mind. The eyepieces with the snap-on chains were still there as I had promised. It didn’t bother Bobby that every eyelet had the same vista. He had to look at them all. Without the gun to play with, we started our bomb shelter.

At Francis Scott Key school there were monthly Atomic Bomb Drills. All the upper grades would walk quietly to the hallway. We’d get on our hands and knees and face the wall. Like Moslems facing Mecca, we bowed to the wall and covered our heads with our arms. We were warned never to look toward the windows at the end of the hall. Of course that’s just where we all hoped to see the atomic cloud and bright light followed by a pressure wave. No one, not even Donald Sterns, knew what a pressure wave was. And no one ever asked. In the newsreels of the day they showed American GIs in Nevada standing in foxholes facing the atomic lights. Bobby and I knew we needed such a foxhole.

We started digging alongside Grandma’s house in the backyard next to the door. We figured you could run out the back door and jump right in. For days we worked on our secret shelter. Grandma and everyone else in the house was trying to help the insect lady, so nobody paid any attention to our efforts. Bobby and I carried the extracted sand and dirt from our shelter to a vacant lot. We covered the entrance to our shelter with a sheet of plywood. The shelter was going to be a surprise for Willie and Grandma. When the hole got deep and over our heads we grooved one wall to form steps. The finished hole was eight feet deep and customized with comic-book provisions, peeper scopes, and a jug of water.

When a policeman came to Grandma’s door I thought he wanted to know about or maybe inspect the shelter. Maybe he followed the dirt trail from the vacant lot.

Grandma knew better. “It’s Mrs. Mercheson, isn’t it?” she questioned the officer.

He said, “Yes, I understand that you are the only neighbor that sees, calls on her occasionally, and — ”

Grandma asked me to get my coat before the policeman finished. When I balked she prompted, “I don’t want you here alone.”

The policeman continued, “Well, I was hoping you might know something about Mrs. Mercheson, about your neighbor. We had a caller this morning, reported that she was dead, and we verified this, and it appears like she’s been shot.”

Grandmother was listening and reaching into the coat closet for her red turban hat. She pinned it on while the officer asked, “Would you come over to the victim’s house and tell us if you notice anything unusual? We can’t locate any family for Mrs. Mercheson, and the next-door neighbors to the deceased were never in the house.”

Grandma and I walked down the street with the policeman. Grandma held me by the scruff of the neck. She had never held me that way before. The iron gate to Mrs. Mercheson’s tunnel-entrance house was ajar, and we went up the stone stairs. I noticed there was no junk mail sticking in the metal grate or the customary pile of newspapers littering the passageway. I wondered if the policeman took note of this peculiarity. I bet myself that he didn’t.

Grandma squeezed my neck a little as we entered Mrs. Mercheson’s home. I looked at Grandma and then at the house. It was clean. Well, as clean as it could be. There were rings on the wallpaper that marked the tide of garbage and dog shit. But the piles of molding papers and rotting pulp were missing.

The policeman saw something else. “This place sure is a mess — looks like there was a dog kept in here. Did Mrs. Mercheson have a dog?”

“Yes,” Grandma answered, “he died two weeks ago. Mrs. Mercheson’s heart was broken.”

“Did she let you in? I understand she was kind of eccentric,” another officer in the house asked.

“She was afraid of everyone, and — and then with the dog dying, she — ”

The first officer interrupted, “This is a strange one, all right. There’s nothing in the house, just this kitchen and dinette table — no other furniture. We figure someone stole the furniture and she came across them and they shot her. Did you ever see the household goods?”

My grandmother nodded no. My mind photographed the empty rooms I had seen. There was never any furniture. The officer kept talking. “It would help us to have a list — the appliances, TV, things like that.”

The second officer, having recorded Grandma’s turn of the head, asked another question. “We are trying to locate a Fuller Brush salesman that worked the Sunset, his name is Myron Deluch — funny name — did you know him?”

Grandma answered, “Oh yes, I was one of his customers — have been for years. Yesterday he left for Ireland, retired, and went home after twenty-five years selling brushes.”

As Grandma talked I scanned the empty house, amazed at the transformation. The trails through the house were gone. Curtains and venetian blinds long positioned to hold out the day were missing. Nail holes and punctures in the plaster marked their stand. Heater grills long submerged under pyramids of waste were visible. Doors that could not be opened for the piles of rubbish now hung freely.

In a way this dark and dank home was like a tomb suddenly cleared and opened to the light. It was breathing again. Even the smell of urine seemed to have evaporated. No, no — my eyes followed a new scent. There it sat on the window sill — a bottle of Wizard Wick. The wick extended, pouring perfume into empty space. There it sat, right in plain view. An open Wizard Wick bottle. Didn’t they see it? Right in front of their noses.

“You know, this is really a strange one. The woman found shot, when we found her, there was a clean sheet wrapped around her and she was wearing, well, wearing what looked like a new nightgown. Boy oh boy, the Sunset gets its share of weird ones.”

I was still watching the Wizard Wick bottle. And waiting for the dog to scratch on the door and Mrs. Mercheson just sitting there like a queen, crazy queen of fear.

“If that’s all I can do for you, I’d like to be getting home,” Grandma said. The policemen thanked us.

Grandma walked quickly from Mrs. Mercheson’s house, her hands now muffed in the pockets of her coat. I asked, “Grandma, what happened to Mrs. Mercheson?”

“Ronald Jones, you heard what the policeman said.”

“Yes, but — ”

“Mrs. Mercheson, God bless her, is finally at rest.”

I was running at the mouth, fighting visions of Willie or Myron or even Grandma killing Mrs. Mercheson. “That old lady was crazy, deserved to die, treating her dog like that and eating nothing but — ”

Grandma wouldn’t let me finish. “Don’t judge people so quickly or harshly — Mrs. Mercheson or any of us. You know she could, in her better moments, look out the window and tell the weather by the flight of the seagulls. If they flew inland it was rain. She was always right about that. And westward meant good weather. I knew her when she was young and grew vegetables and had callers. She loved to dance, you know. Ballroom dancing. And she wore her hair up — it was so beautiful.”

Grandma painted a lady I had never known. I remembered only that sight of a frayed person unraveling — a dog barking and scratching — a woman talking only of insects, not seagulls.

When we returned to Grandma’s, the hole in the backyard was filled in. I never touched the dirt in that patch of yard again. Never. And when I think of guns I see only one gun — a silver-plated revolver hidden in a handkerchief. And when I think of killing I see seagulls and my grandmother crying. Always.

For information about Airman, write Ron Jones, 1201 Stanyan Street, San Francisco, California 94117.