One of my dreams: to have a sandwich named after me. I know–dream big, Michele!
Ian and I were drooling over the potential ingredients of our namesake sandwiches, recently. That’s when I remembered the summer, after high school, when I worked at The Rockaway Beach Deli on Highway 1 in Pacifica (About 10 miles south of San Francisco, on the coast). A man came in and said to me, “Make me any sandwich you want. Your favorite.”
I pulled out one of our freshly baked sourdough rolls, sliced it open, slathered the roll with Russian dressing, topped it with big pieces of our fresh, sweet crab meat, added some diced onions, and big slices of Gruyère cheese. Then I put the open sandwich under the oven broiler until bubbly and browned, and topped it with the Rockaway Beach Deli’s delicious homemade (made there) cole slaw. The guy loved it.
If THAT’s going to be The Michele Sandwich, I might have to add some hot sauce to give it some spice.
Here I am at 18 years old, posing outside of The Rockaway Beach Deli, during work. You know, doesn’t everyone pose like this while working? *Notice I’m wearing a sweater… it was SUMMER in Pacifica.Photo of the old Rockaway Beach Deli building. I took this on a road trip in 2011.
Excerpt from my book “Craving Normal,” in my story “Confessions of a Hollywood Extra”:
While working as an extra on the movie “Back to School,” with Rodney Dangerfield, I sat about ten feet from Rodney and Sally Kellerman as they prepared to do a scene—the quiet of the set before the cameras rolled allowed my voice to carry. My female newlywed friend, another extra, wondered if I wanted to get married. The last thing on my mind! So I said, “I’m not meeting guys nice enough to go out with in LA. Can’t imagine finding one to marry.” My voice carried through the silent crowd.
Rodney’s voice boomed toward me. “Hey, Honey! Come down here! I’ll marry ya! I’ll marry ya, right now!” My face turned hot, and I’m sure as red as a tomato, while Rodney, the crew, and the extras laughed. Well, that was one way to shut me up. And it did.
On the bottom right, after hours in the blazing sun, using all my acting skills to become an enthralled, sports-loving, college student.
Bottom left, dancing to Oingo Boingo in the
Dead Man’s Party scene, in “Back to School.”
Jen (the blonde in the video thumbnail) is my newlywed friend I mentioned in my Rodney Dangerfield moment of humiliation. I’m dancing in this Oingo Boingo
video, next to Jen. But you have to stop the video to find me. And, of course,
I DID just that. I’m at 2:08.
Why did I cancel our reservations I made at Cal-Neva, Tahoe, back in 2007? I asked Ian, my husband, the other day. Neither of us could remember. Then I found this old blog post I wrote:
Ian walked into our living room and found our kitten, June, choking. He yelled to me, “The cat’s choking on her toy!” The toy’s a little fuzzy pom pom with a mouse face on it and a string of yarn with a bell on the end for the tail.
I ran into the room to see Ian sticking his fingers down the kitty’s throat, trying to pull out the toy. I jumped in and performed some kitty Heimlich thrusts with my thumbs. Nothing! So I, too, stuck my fingers down her throat. What do you know. She didn’t like that. Not at all. So she ravaged my hand with her little kitty teeth and claws.
With my bloody hand I grabbed my car keys and with the other hand I grasped the kitten, and ran to the car. Our daughter ran behind. We sped to an emergency vet down the street. The kitten was still breathing. Great. But the the object would be speeding its way down her stomach. We needed to move fast
Stupid emergency vet. He couldn’t see the kitty toy on June’s x-ray. So, in a huff, my daughter and I sped her over to a more trustworthy vet. We told them about the silly vet who couldn’t see the mass. They nodded their heads in sympathy, served us chai tea lattes (This is LA, after all) and reasoned the best we could do would be an endoscopy (put a tube with a camera into her stomach) to find the object and pull it out. So June would need to stay for the over night procedure.
1:35 am – My phone rang. I knew it’d be the vet. My heart raced.
Me: Hello? How’s my kitten?
Vet: Sorry.
Me: Excuse me. (My heart dropped)
Vet: Sorry, you cut out…what did you say?
Me: My kitty, how is she?
Vet: Uh, fine. But we can’t see any object other than food in her stomach.
6:30am – I left to pick up our kitten. She needed be taken, with catheter in tow, to our regular vet for further examination.
7:15 am – June the kitten – who the last vet assistant lovingly referred to as “Butthead” for her obstinate personality (it runs in the family) – and I drove (well, I did the driving and the kitten ran around the car clawing at her head cone) toward our vet. Maybe, I thought, the object was lodged too far down?
7:20 am – My cell phone rang. I pulled over from driving and dug my phone out of my purse.
Me: Yeah.
Ian: I found the toy.
Me: You WHAT?!
Yep, the kitten never swallowed the toy. We suspected her tooth was just caught on her too large collar (which my daughter said in the beginning) and so it looked like she was gagging.
I said to Ian, after realizing we now could not afford to go on vacation, due to the cost of this fiasco, “Hey, don’t worry. Let’s move forward. Think of it as making a deposit in your karma bank.”
I really wanted to believe that, because a week in Tahoe would’ve been a lot of fun. Anyway, apologies to the vet we found to be lacking in medical knowledge. I guess that degree on your wall does mean something after all. (*A few years later, Cal-Neva would close. Turns out June saved us from a nightmare. Read this man’s review of Cal-Neva.)
*In my previous post, “Wedding vs Marriage,” this could be added to my suggested wedding vows:
Our kitten June, we then called June Carter CASH, due to how much she cost us.
I (provide name) promise to stick with you even if you imagine our kitten is choking on her toy, which then causes hours of chaos and drama so expensive, we can no longer afford to go on vacation.
“Craving Normal,” my stories as a child growing up in the 1960s and beyond, will be available soon. Here’s my nearly complete book cover. Think I’ll keep “Enthusiastic quote goes here.”
Book cover for “Craving Normal,” written by Michele Miles Gardiner
“Craving Normal,” by Michele Miles Gardiner – back book cover text:
Living in a rock hut on a nude beach, staying in a religious commune,
facing an angry man with a gun, riding camels, hiding her freaky health
food lunches from lucky Twinkie eaters – Michele didn’t experience any
of this when her family lived in the suburbs of San Francisco. Then came
the counterculture revolution. Her entire life changed: Michele’s young
parents sold their home, bought a car and trailer over-seas and took her
and her little sister to explore the world.
We know a lot about the “flower children,” but what does an actual child
growing up in that era have to say? While many tales about that revolutionary time
are on record, few come from the perspective of the children who lived it.
This collection of stories are from one child’s perspective – tales of
becoming a young adult whose brain, and life, transformed from her early
experiences. Rebelling by cheer-leading, eating junk food, attending honor
roll parties, dreaming of being a foxy stewardess/actress? Lame, sure.
But how else does a child of young parents of the wild Sixties generation
rebel? By countering the counterculture.
Michele’s collection of stories – in which she rarely takes herself too
seriously – span from her earliest memories of the suburbs (her idea of
“normal”), through growing up trying to find a place where she fits in, once
again. Does she find it? Is Hollywood a sane place to search for normalcy?
(Photo: Here I am orating behind the podium at Anarchist Forum in Hyde Park, London. And, yes, I’m wearing lederhosen. See, you’d be ranting too if you had to wear suede shorts with suspenders, didn’t have a TV or any junk food. My dad wrote on this slide, “Michele mouthing off.” My mom said I drew a small crowd.)
Look I’ve been working on my book, “Craving Normal,” for so long I have posts on my dusty old blog about it… from – gulp! – ten years ago. As a lover of words, writing and books, every year I attend the LA Times Festival of Books. Here’s one such visit I blogged about on my now defunct (or is it de-funked, as in lost its funk?) blog, “Aprilbaby’s California Life” –
I walked by the NPR booth and heard author Susan Straight being interviewed. I stopped because I heard her mention her eldest child was at the Coachella music festival. The interviewer asked, “Oh, so do you think she’ll tune in to hear you on the radio?”
I knew I could relate to Susan when she said, “Uh, no. She doesn’t listen to me at home. Why would she want to hear me on the radio?” Spoken as a true parent to a teenager.
Susan Straight is an author from the Inland Empire. I only learned that after stumbling upon the book, “Inlandia,” and saw that the forward was written by the very same Susan Straight. Intrigued, I bought the book and attended a panel discussion with Susan and other writers from “Inlandia,” an anthology of writers from the Inland Empire.
My only time spent in the Inland part of California is whenever I have to pass through it heading for the San Bernardino Mountains to go skiing or the one time I cruised down part of Route 66. As the writers of “Inlandia” tell it, their home has been disparaged as nothing more than where the Hell’s Angels, neo-Nazis and smog dwell. Until then, I knew so little about the Inland Empire, I didn’t even realize that much about the area.
During the panel, the writers spoke of a place they grew up where orange groves and date tree forests were so vast they’d get lost in them; where the Santa Ana winds and the sand would blast the paint off of cars; where the air smelled of Eucalyptus and orange blossoms. It was where they arrived, grew and stayed.
As a resident of the San Fernando Valley, another maligned Southern California area, I could relate. While I’ve only read a few chapters of “Inlandia,” I’m really enjoying getting lost in the stories of their misunderstood land.
As I bought “Inlandia” from the Heyday Publishing Founder, Malcolm Margolin, he asked me what I do. I told him I’m writing “Craving Normal,” my stories of growing up in California and traveling the world as the kid of hippies. Malcolm, the bearded Allen Ginsberg look-a-like, threw back his head and laughed. “Did your parents feed you lentil loaf when all you really wanted was junk food?”
I slapped him on the shoulder. “Yeah, how’d ya guess?”
He told me his kids could relate as children of hippies.
“Yep, I just wanted a Twinkie,” I told him.
He nodded in sympathy, as if he’d heard it a million times from his own now-adult kids.
Yet I’ve got a craving to be heard, so I persevere, closer than ever to having my book, “Craving Normal,” published. In all these years a lot has happened – raised my daughter who went off to college; started a successful business, Tree Audio; dealt with life and death – but always I go back to my stories, crafting them, shaping them, editing them. My craving is a constant obsession, as you see.
Hey, wanna see some photos I’ll have in my book, “Craving Normal”? Here’s one. Consider this photo (Dad and me) is from the time in my life I refer to as the “normal” period, and you might understand the thesis of my book. This was an ordinary day in my life. But It just got weirder from here. So please feel free to share your own freaky childhood photo or less than typical memory in the comments below. Pleeeeeease. Come on! I can’t be the only one.
Well, now that you’re here, I’ll let you know more about my book, “Craving Normal.” I do have a thesis: Born into a relatively calm period in the mid 1960s, which I considered “normal” – right before the explosion of the counterculture movement – I watched and experienced my world change. Language, music, fashion, lifestyles, ideas and expectations changed faster than we could toss out my slinky and turn on a lava lamp. While this period in history is often spoken about by the young adults of that era, a.k.a “flower children,” I write from MY perspective, that of a child, a REAL child. I like to think that’s one thing which make my stories unique. What were we kids thinking? What were our experiences? My stories then follow my growing up in the shadow of all these changes. While many are quite goofy, they show how I bopped around the world, a world I was still trying to figure out on my own – just as the generation before me tried to figure it out. But I also try to bring humor to all these experiences, whenever I can.
Like this photo I posted, I mean, how can I not look back and laugh? Seriously, this was just a typical day in my young life, one I thought completely ordinary. Why not? What else did I know? And I sure didn’t know things would get even more colorful… real soon.
If you’d like to keep updated about the progress of my up coming book, please leave your email here.
