Shirley Larson’s plans had worked out. After her first date with Dan Taylor in August, 1959, they kept seeing each other throughout her senior year at USC. She graduated in June of 1960, and it was around that time that Dan asked her to marry him.
“Yes…yes, yes, yes!” was her answer.
Dan was slogging away as a junior associate at Adams, Duque & Hazeltine. In the spring of 1961, the firm took on a new partner. He was Richard Nixon, the former Vice President of the United States.
Nixon was from the Los Angeles area, having grown up in nearby Whittier. He had served as a Congressman, representing a wide swath of L.A. County, from 1947-51. During that time, he had made a name for himself when he caught the highly ranked former Franklin Roosevelt State Department aide, Alger Hiss, in a lie about spying for the Soviets.
The Communists had increased their espionage activities in the late 1940s and early 1950s. They found fertile ground in the liberal Hollywood film community. Outside of the elitists in show biz, however, Los Angeles was Nixon Country, and in 1950 he set out to make the whole state his, so to speak.
He defeated Helen Gahagan Douglas, a left-leaning former actress, for the U.S. Senate. He only held that office for two years. By 1952, California was considered the largest, most influential political prize in the country, and the young Nixon was a star in the Republican Party.
Former General Dwight Eisenhower chose Nixon as his running mate, and when Ike was elected President, Nixon ascended to national office. In eight years, he had a tempestuous relationship with the press. He showed foreign policy moxie, and after some deal making with New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller, was rewarded with the G.O.P. nomination for President, to run against John F. Kennedy, in 1960.
Several things hurt Nixon. First, Ike was asked to name some important decision that Nixon had influenced, and he said he needed time to think of one. Then, Nixon’s perpetual “five o’clock shadow” made him look sinister compared to the movie star-handsome JFK in televised debates. Finally, in the worst political crime in U.S. history, Kennedy’s father and Texas Senator Lyndon Johnson orchestrated the stealing of millions of votes in Illinois and Texas, just enough to push Kennedy into the White House.
Nixon was approached by the owners of Major League baseball teams about becoming Commissioner, but opted instead to return to California. He fully intended to jump back into politics, but decided he needed a base of operations that would allow him to make good money.
Nixon became what is known as a “rainmaker” for the downtown L.A. firm of Adams, Duque & Hazeltine. A rainmaker is a lawyer who brings big-money clients with him by virtue of his name, contacts and reputation. Nixon had practiced law in Whittier prior to World War II, and for a brief time after his discharge from the Navy, but since 1946 he had not been an active attorney.
At Adams, Duque, he was paid handsomely, bringing in heavy-duty clients who were attracted to the former Vice President and were willing to pay for “access.” In return, Nixon would be given a light workload that would allow him to travel, make speeches and politick.
At first, Nixon lived in a Wilshire Boulevard apartment, but after a few months, when the school year ended, his wife, Pat and two young daughters, Tricia and Julie, joined him in Los Angeles. They moved in to a mansion in the fashionable Trousdale Estates section of Beverly Hills, high above the muck and mire of the City of Angels. The purchase of the home was made possible by a sweetheart deal arranged by a political “friend.”
Dan Taylor saw the new celebrity partner as an important person in his future. Nixon had a close association with his father, Charles, Sr. and his brother, Charles III. Dan’s father had been a Republican Congressman, representing the area Nixon now lived in, throughout the 1950s. During that time, he had been a staunch ally of Nixon and Eisenhower, who could be counted on to vote the party line. Charles III met Nixon while working in London for the Ambassador to the Court of Saint James, and in 1961 Nixon was instrumental in arranging for the Adams, Duque account to be directed towards Charles’ new public relations and advertising agency.
“Dan Taylor,” Nixon had said, extending his hand to Dan before he was formally introduced on his first day at the firm.
“It’s an honor, sir,” Dan said.
“I recall you well playing quarterback for the Trojans,” said Nixon. “I was hoping you’d make a go of it with the Rams.”
Dan was impressed that Nixon had known of his sports exploits as well as he did, particularly his short-lived pre-season stint with the Rams.
“It’s just too bad you had to hurt yourself in the Army,” Nixon went on. “I know that you were one of Rod’s best pitchers and no doubt would have been a valuable asset in Chicago. I’ve followed USC sports avidly my whole life. Pat went there, you know, and my first dates with her were attending football games at the Coliseum.”
Dan found that he was a favorite of the new partner, and over time would be asked to have lunch or dinner with Nixon, or to take an audience with him in his palatial office, overlooking the L.A. Basin.
“You know, Dan,” Nixon told him “I think you should think about your future, and how you can distinguish yourself. I plan to get back in politics, sooner rather than later, and I can use a bright young conservative such as yourself. I sure could. I’d appreciate if you would help me with some things. I’ll be making speeches and putting out position papers - things I can use, you know, uh, to advance my agenda and deal with the press. That sort of thing. You’re in a perfect position here. I’ve arranged the use of the office and the staff, you know. I mean, it would surely be a break from the regular legal briefs and mundane court appearances, I would think. What do you say?”
“Yes, sir,” replied Dan, with stars in his eyes.
Where would this lead him? he wondered. All the way, maybe.
In June, 1961, Dan and Shirley were married at Shirley’s Episcopalian family church in Newport Beach, and Nixon’s attendance helped make it one of the social events of the season. Dan and Shirley were later invited to Nixon’s Beverly Hills estate, where they made friends with Pat and the girls.
In 1962, Nixon ran for Governor of California. Dan’s brother’s company was employed as Nixon’s PR firm and campaign consultants, and Dan was given a leave of absence to travel and work on the campaign. He wrote speeches, did research and helped prepare the position papers that Nixon used to make his points with the media.
“We’re going all the way,” Nixon told Dan. “You and me. From Sacramento I’ll have the stage to launch a national comeback. I’ll need people, people I can trust. I don’t like those Washington elitists, Dan. They all went to Hah-verd, and they’re mostly Jews. Nothing against the Jews, but they have their own agenda. I need God-fearing Westerners like you, Dan. People from a clean land who bring a fresh perspective. I’m taking you with me. You name the job you want, in Sacramento, or you can stay in Los Angeles with the firm. I’ll make you chair of the state G.O.P. You can make money. You need to make money. That was my mistake. Not a mistake, really. You can’t control events. I could have been rich, but of course there was the war, and they weren’t paying much at Bougainville.”
Nixon and Dan laughed at the bosses “humor.”
“So I thought, when I got back,” Nixon went on, “I had a family by then, so I figured the practice would be there and I could make a nest egg, but of course the party came to me and said I had to run against Voorhis. Opportunity knocks only so many times, Dan. I had hoped to make that move later on down the road, but I ran against Voorhis and had no money for my family.
“They don’t pay well in Washington, either. I come from nothing. My father had a lemon ranch in Whittier, and it was the poorest lemon ranch in the San Gabriel Valley. I’m not so sure even about running for Governor, Dan. I’m finally in the pink with Adams, Duque, and I’ve a big nut with the house and the girls in private school, and now I’ll have to finance a second set of expenses in Sacramento. My point is, make your money. Set your fam
ily up. But be ready when I call on you.”
So there it was. Dan Taylor, 30 years old, had his future mapped out before him. He would march with history alongside Richard Milhous Nixon.
Dan’s march was interrupted when Edmund “Pat” Brown beat Nixon that November. No sooner had Nixon told a packed horde of writers at a Beverly Hills press conference, “Gentleman, you won’t have Nixon to kick around anymore, because gentleman, this is my last press conference,” than he was off to New York and a new life.
Nixon, at that point, wanted to shed himself of the California experience and take on the “fast track” of the Big Apple. This meant big money on Wall Street, and eventually a successful run at the Presidency. There were a lot of California loyalists who felt that Nixon had left them behind.
Dan suddenly felt a chill at Adams, Duque & Hazeltine. Once a fair-haired boy, Nixon’s protégé, without the famous man around anymore he was suddenly a guy who had not been carrying his weight in the form of case loads, billable hours, and valuable court experience.
In 1964, Shirley gave birth to Stan. By this time, the couple had moved to Palos Verdes Estates. In the Los Angeles hospital where Stan was born, Dan held his baby boy in the air and announced, “This kid’s gonna be a ball player.”
In the mid-1960s, still an associate at Adams, Duque and with no foreseeable prospects of making partner, Dan decided that he needed to make a move. He contacted his brother. His relationship with Charles had always been strained. Charles was the favored older brother, and in most ways had always overshadowed him. Now, Charles was the head of a powerful PR firm. He was a mover and shaker in California politics, where he was advising an actor with political ambitions, Ronald Reagan, on how best to make his move into the public arena. He handled the accounts of top people in the movie industry, and was already a very wealthy man.
Dan was doing fine, but was by no means rich. They would all inherit millions from their father, but Dan was looking for more than money. He wanted respect. He wanted cachet, clout. His brother had it, and he wanted it.
He had corresponded with Nixon for a while when he had gone off to Wall Street, but by the mid-1960s he no longer had any real relationship with him. Charles III’s good friend, Kip Wentworth, however, was somebody he wanted to get close to.
Wentworth had met Charles III in the Marines, and had arranged for Charles to serve in London as a diplomat. He had held office in the California Legislature, and was respected for his astute mind and photographic memory.
Now, Wentworth headed a prestigious Westside L.A. law firm, and Dan thought it was only natural that he switch over to Wentworth’s firm. He called his brother, and asked for a meeting. Charles hemmed and hawed, not really giving him an answer. Time went by. Dan pressed him, and Charles demurred.
Finally, Dan contacted Wentworth’s office himself. He identified who he was, the brother of one of Kip Wentworth’s best friends and confidantes. He expected to hear something like, “Dan boy, good to hear from you. A friend of Charles’s is a friend of mine. We’d love to have you on board.”
Instead, he got more hemming and hawing. Time passed. Phone calls were not returned. Letters went unanswered.
What’s goin’ on here? Dan asked himself.
Finally, he persisted and eventually made some headway. He arranged with a secretary to meet with Wentworth. He then asked his brother to write a letter of introduction on his behalf. After more hemming and hawing, Charles said he would.
The day arrived, and Dan showed up at Wentworth’s office with his newly polished resume, only the secretary said he did not have an appointment. He sat on his hands, embarrassed, while the secretary called several people to see if they had Dan Taylor on their schedule. None did. Dan asked if a promised letter from Charles Taylor III had arrived. It had not.
Finally, after two hours in the lobby, watching fat cat clients march in and get the red carpet treatment, an attorney at the firm who was about his age received Dan. The attorney apologized for the inconvenience, or the mix-up, or whatever it was. He asked Dan a few cursory questions, and Dan tried to put on his best game face. It was obvious that he was getting the bum rush.
The interview lasted five minutes, and Dan walked out of the office seeing the future. For the first time in his up-to-now charmed life, he did not see unlimited success. He now examined his past, and tinges of regret began to gnaw at him.
He had chosen to take the safer route of the Army Reserves instead of going to Korea like his brother, and now this seemed to be something that was held against him. He had hurt himself at Fort Ord, and now he thought that perhaps this was some kind of payback. It had kept him from achieving a promising big league baseball career.
Maybe he should have gone for football right out of school. By the time he had tried out for the Rams, his skills on the gridiron had deteriorated. A golden boy at Adams, Duque & Hazeltine, he had been a “big shot,” or so he thought, flying around the state doing politics with Nixon.
When Nixon lost and left the firm, he found that not just a few people thought he had displayed a little too much hubris. Now, Kip Wentworth’s law firm had rebuffed him. He felt that something had gone on behind the scenes, something that worked against him.
He was a guy who had led a hell of a good life up to now, and had no right feeling sorry for himself. But his expectations had been awfully high, and when you shoot for the stars, the inevitable failures that come with such aspirations can seem worse than they are.
Dan stayed with Adams, Duque & Hazeltine, but he was not on their fast track. Did they know that he had tried to interview with Wentworth? The time came in which the natural offer of a partnership would have been made, but it was not. Dan began to feel a pit in his stomach. Stress took over. He had headaches, skin rashes, a buzzing sound in his ear that seemed to be a million flies calling him “loser.”
In 1967, the national political landscape began to take shape. Lyndon Johnson held the Presidency, but the Democrats were in trouble over the Vietnam War. The Republicans sensed that the White House could be taken. There were several attractive candidates among the G.O.P. ranks, most notably Nixon and Nelson Rockefeller.
Rockefeller had hurt himself, however, when he divorced his wife to marry his girlfriend, Happy. Nixon was the most viable possibility. He still had youth on his side. After losing in California in ’62, and telling the press they “won’t have Nixon to kick around anymore,” he had made it in the Big Apple.
Longtime friend and Wall Street powerhouse John Mitchell had helped Nixon re-invent and prove himself to the Wall Street crowd, an important group of movers and shakers who controlled opinion, politics, and money within the Eastern Establishment.
This was an important part of the New Nixon image. Previously, Nixon had been associated with California and the conservative, “rugged individualist” vote that was becoming an important part of the political equation. By making it in New York, Nixon had usurped Rockefeller’s power within the so-called “Rockefeller wing” of the Republican Party, without losing his appeal as a Westerner and a conservative to the Goldwaterites. They made up much of the electorate west of the Mississippi River.
Nixon had used his position to great advantage from 1963-67. Mitchell had made him partner, and indeed he had done real legal work. In addition to his “rainmaker” status as a celebrity name, attracting high-profile clients like Studebaker and PepsiCo, bringing in millions in legal fees, he had also taken on arduous cases. This included arguing before the Supreme Court in a groundbreaking ruling on what constitutes privacy, what kinds of people are most entitled to it, and the elements of malice.
Still, the firm had given him wide latitude to travel, at the firm’s expense, on fund raising and political junkets, giving him a chance to stay in the opinion game. He went to Vietnam, spoke to American and South Vietnamese generals, toured the country politicking for Republican Congressional and gubernatorial hopefuls, and was always available to a hungry press.
/> Dan observed Nixon’s comings and goings throughout the 1960s. He had made reference in his correspondence to Nixon, to a hope on his part of working with him in New York, or becoming a traveling political advisor. Little encouragement came his way. He saw Nixon speaking in Saigon, being received by European heads of state, and stumping across the U.S. Even when Nixon came to Los Angeles to campaign for Ronald Reagan, running for Governor in 1966, Dan’s efforts to meet with Nixon, or even to have some meaningful involvement in Republican campaign politics, were not satisfactorily met.
What was most galling about all of this was the fact that Charles was playing a major role as a political consultant to both Nixon and Reagan, as was Kip Wentworth. It became a source of real embarrassment to Dan, whose friends would assume that he was part of the “in crowd.” In fact, the lack of communication with his own brother became so obvious that Dan preferred to stay as far away from the scene as he could.
In 1967, Nixon made official what everybody already knew. He was going after the Presidency. His campaign staff was being formulated. While Nixon had his fair share of heavyweight New Yorkers on his team, he still maintained some disdain for the “East Coast elites,” or as he put it, the “Harvard crowd.” This stemmed from the fact that, while he had the grades to get in to Harvard coming out of Whittier High School, Nixon was forced by economics and family responsibility to attend Whittier College instead.
Nixon’s team was heavily made up of Southern Californians, among them Dan’s brother and Charles’ friend Wentworth. There were downtown L.A. lawyers, Miracle Mile advertising executives, and Orange County businessmen. They brought a fresh, new perspective to national politics.
Nixon had wide crossover appeal, a fact that has been lost over the years. His caricatured visage as a Watergate crook and “Tricky Dick” pol who had a problem with the truth overwhelmed his other qualities. Aside from his carefully crafted image as a Wall Streeter who was friendly to business, and as a Westerner who embodied moral values and the responsible side of law-and-order taxpayers, he also was a hawk.
Nixon, it was said, had a “secret plan” to end the Vietnam War. Many Americans, particularly Southerners, hoped that the secret plan was to bomb Hanoi back to the Stone Age. They did not put it past Nixon.
There was another edge to Nixon when it came to his “Southern strategy.” This was racial politics, pure and simple.
Nixon had grown up poor in Southern California. He had a natural sympathy for the poor and the oppressed, including Mexicans and other minorities whose lot in life was not so different than his own humble beginnings.
At Duke Law School, hardcore Jim Crow bigots surrounded him. Nixon argued long and hard with his classmates, advocating the rights of blacks. He was deeply religious, a Quaker raised on values of peace and love for all.
For all of that, however, Nixon was about “personal responsibility,” because it was his own sense of responsibility that gave him the resolve to pull himself up by the bootstraps and rise to great heights. He believed that in America anybody could succeed if they worked hard.
By 1968, the term “personal responsibility” had become a code phrase among conservatives of what all too many blacks did not have going for them. Many blacks were viewed as “welfare queens” and “jakers” who pimped their women and abandoned their children. Johnson’s Great Society had created, in the minds of conservatives at least, a dependence class, like what had happened in England, where the British Empire had crumbled amid the creation of the Welfare State.
Nixon played his cards perfectly. He courted the John Birch Society, an extreme right wing element of the Republican Party. The extremists were naturally pre-disposed to George Wallace, the bigoted, yet popular, Governor of Alabama, who was still advocating segregation in the Deep South.
Wallace, however, was a Democrat, and therefore represented one of the great historical flaws of the Democratic Party. While the G.O.P. was the “party of Lincoln,” as Nixon aptly pointed out, the Democrats were the party of Jim Crow, lynch mobs, segregation and discrimination. It was the Democrats, not the Republicans, who had denied blacks the right to vote, and for all the liberal nostrums of Democrats in the Northeast, nobody could deny these truths.
The Birchers and extremists wanted power. They wanted a President they could have access to. Wallace was popular, but lacked the national appeal to carry the election in November. Nixon was their logical alternative, not perfect by any means, but just sympathetic enough to their viewpoints to be tolerable.
It is interesting to note that while Nixon used the Birchers to raise money and create voter blocs, once elected he abandoned most of their domestic agenda in favor of liberal government expansion that in many ways carried forward the Great Society.
Dan Taylor had made a lot of phone calls in 1967 and ’68, trying to position himself with the Nixon campaign. For the most part, his efforts resulted in still more frustration. His brother was regularly quoted in the papers, or was seen on the Sunday talk shows, talking up strategy or advocating the Republican side of various debates. Any reference to Kip Wentworth was always followed by something like “a possible member of any future Nixon Cabinet.”
All Dan got were invitations to various volunteer meetings, where he would just be one of the rabble. He could not understand why he was being passed over. His father had been a big shot, a Congressman, and his brother was a power player. He was no lightweight himself, or so he thought. He possessed an excellent education, had done military service, was a recognized athlete of note, and had worked for an influential law firm where he had once been a protégé of Nixon himself. For all of that, he was left out of the game.
As the campaign progressed and grew, and Nixon eventually captured first the nomination and eventually the White House, it was particularly galling to him when he saw how many of the so-called “USC Mafia” had landed top slots in the Nixon Corporation. Many of these guys he had known at SC, or through his connections as an alum. There was Donald Segretti, who seemed to just waltz into the Administration after a tour in the Army. Dwight Chapin was Nixon’s appointments secretary. Ron Ziegler was the President’s PR spokesman.
Eventually, Wentworth would land a non-Cabinet position in Nixon’s Department of Defense, and Charles, helped by heavy campaigning by Nixon himself, would capture the Congressional seat representing Palos Verdes and the South Bay in 1970.
Dan Taylor watched all of it pass him by in slow motion, and he was unable to do a damn thing about it. He stopped trying. He was on the outside looking in. He came to realize that the feelings he had for his brother were close to hatred. Dan did not much like himself, either.
He began to question who he was and what his life was all about. He had a good marriage and family, but Dan wanted to achieve greatness. His chance to do this was slipping away. He began to drink. Heavily. He started buying pornography at a cheap adult bookstore in downtown L.A., hiding the material from Shirley. He began to feel anger and resentment. Dan would leave his office and see blacks standing on the street corners, peddling drugs or women, or high themselves, or just doing nothing of any value, and he began to feel stronger and stronger negative feelings for them.
Over time, his attitude about blacks got worse, and expanded towards an overall disdain for non-whites, even for Jews, who he began to see as money-hungry sharks who were quickly filling all the vital roles that he always thought had been reserved for guys such as himself.
Dan had a first-class brain, a good legal mind, but had discovered that he was not a courtroom wizard. All his life, he had been a “plodder.” He read slowly, and lacked great reading comprehension. He had to read over and over, and make meticulous notes, in order to effectively attain knowledge.
He had been in court on more than one occasion, sweating and nervous, with a well-dressed Jewish lawyer on the other side. Every time, Dan had frozen up at the key moments while the Jewish lawyers always seemed to have every fact, every rule of law, at their menta
l fingertips.
To a guy who was used to winning like Dan, this resulted not in admiration but disdain. Dan began to frequent a downtown bar near the courthouse called Joe’s. It was an eclectic place. They served good food and had been in business since the 1920s, but the clientele was mixed, especially depending upon the time of day.
After work, the place was packed with lawyers and judges from the courthouse. They drank whiskey and told loud stories. The theatre house was nearby, too, so at dinner when the show was playing, the crowd tended to be artsy types.
During the day, on weekends, and late at night, though, the place was a dive. The “street people” who frequented Joe’s were there all the time, and for the most part were hardcore alcoholics.
The professional people who hung out there and befriended them had a kinship of sorts. Dan Taylor felt shunned by the legal and political circles that he had worked hard to ingratiate himself with. He had discovered over time that marriage and family would cause even old friends and teammates to drift apart. These Joe’s patrons became his new pals.
The street people of Joe’s were not bums. They had jobs or at least money and a decent place to live. Many were retired longshoremen or merchant marines, manly men who had traveled and experienced the world. Some lived in pension hotels or with their children. Many still worked - bartenders, hotel elevator operators, and the like.
When homeless bums would occasionally wander in, they would be shooshed away in no uncertain terms. There were occasional hookers who would come in, but very rarely to do business. Many patrons knew who the hookers were and might solicit sex, but it was not to be done in an obvious manner. A hooker was welcome if she was not too outrageous in her appearance, and not too plainly working it.
Only one bookie at a time operated out of Joe’s. Over the years, many had made it their “office,” but never more than one at a time, so as to prevent the place from becoming nothing more than a numbers joint that sold alcohol.
Gambling was big at Joe’s. Everybody was in on it all the time. If any one activity banded all the different people who frequented the establishment, this was it, and Dan Taylor developed a pretty rabid fever for it.
The bookies of Joe’s, by and large, were independent. Some were Mob-connected, and there were local organized crime figures who came in, but it never ever became a “Mob hangout.”
Dan Taylor would come in to Joe’s every single day. He was known by everybody there; the waiters, the busboys, the bartenders, the patrons, everybody. Good old Dan.
Here, there were no expectations. Rarely did he ever have to field questions about why his brother had not elevated him up the political ladder, or why Kip Wentworth had not given him the time of day. He did talk up the old times, his football and baseball glory days at nearby USC, how his pro career had been cut short by that stupid injury falling off a truck at Fort Ord. He had become a has-been, old before he was really old.
He drank Bourbon, mixed with Collins mix and Angostura bitters, a special concoction that the bartenders had learned to mix just for him, and which Dan called a Stanerino, after his only son.
To the rest of the Joe’s crowd, Stan was the one thing of great meaning to Dan. Dan talked about his son all the time; his height, his fresh-faced, blonde-haired good lucks, his “chip off the old block” baseball ability in little league. Dan loved his son completely.
Dan routinely powered six to eight Stanerinos at Joe’s every day. At first, he would come in after a long, hard day at the office, but by the early 1970s Dan no longer saw the need to work late at Adams, Duque. Sometimes he left by two, usually by four or 4:30. Sometimes he went to a strip club, or stopped by a porno bookstore, but Joe’s was his constant destination.
Dan was drunk every time he got behind the wheel of his car, but he was usually mired in rush hour traffic, first getting out of downtown, then on the Harbor Freeway. Drunk driving was not as avidly patrolled in those days, and Dan knew to be careful. He was never stopped.
Dan usually stopped at a liquor store on the way home. There were two that he favored. One was on the corner just before picking up the freeway. Dan would illegally park out front, because there usually were no spots available, and go in to buy Bourbon, Collins mix, Angostura bitters, Budweiser, nuts, chips and the like. He would BS with the weathered old guy who ran the place, talking about the Dodgers or the Trojans, or whatever.
Sometimes Dan would stop at a liquor store in Torrance, on his way home after exiting the Harbor Freeway. He could find a parking space there, but the items were the same. Dan thought nothing about opening the cold beer for the ride home, and by the time he pulled up to the house in Palos Verdes Estates, he might have gone through half the six-pack. He would often leave the empties lying in the car. Before MADD, open containers and drinking under the influence were not as taboo.
When Dan got home, he was usually tired from the work and the drive. He gave Shirley a half-ass greeting, but he was all about Stan. He wanted to know about Stan’s day, school, and especially any news that had to do with Stan’s baseball “career.”
Stan often did not know his father was home until he heard the sound of cracking ice upstairs. That was Dan’s first objective. Crack the ice, make a Stanerino, and relax. The alcohol would flow back in to Dan, and immediately he would begin to laugh it up, cracking jokes, laughing like crazy, cheering everybody with his good humor. Until dinner. Shirley could cook, although she was not on the healthy side of dietary concerns. Neither was anybody else in those days.
Dinner meant wine, usually a California red bought at one of Dan’s preferred liquor stores. The food and the wine would hit Dan like a ton of bricks. After drinking at Joe’s, then on the ride home, then when he got home, mixing alcohol and finishing things off with a heavy meal and some dark wine worthy of a Coppola movie, Dan was done. One could stick a fork in him.
He would sit at the table and stew, long after the meal was finished and his family had departed for clean-up duty (which he never participated in, claiming he had “done all the dishes I’ll ever do in my life” when he was a bachelor). Nobody wanted to touch him with a 10-foot pole once he reached this condition.
This man, this fellow of wit and humor, this great athlete and ladies man, this brilliant student and charismatic figure, who had made good friends with black and Latino sports teammates, who had traveled the country and the world playing ball and loved meeting meeting people of all races and diversities, who had actively sought out foreign students at SC because he wanted to know more…Dan Taylor had sunk into being something else.
Now, foul epithets began to emerge about blacks and Jews.
“Goddamn niggers.”
“Fuckin’ Kuykes.”
He would swear and throw things. Shirley would cry.
The Taylor’s liked to go out to dinner. Amazingly, their favorite restaurant was Joe’s. Not the Joe’s where Dan hung out downtown. This was a different Joe’s, a cleaner, upscale place with the most amazing food in the world. It was located in San Pedro, where L.A.’s Italian community was, and around here one could not get away with “imitation” Italian cuisine like other places in Los Angeles. They had a special baker who made sourdough bread comparable with San Francisco or Rome. Stan loved the cheeseburgers, Shirley liked fish, and Dan was a prawns dore guy.
The food at this place was to die for. Dan took his family out to dinner a lot. He was generous, and a big tipper. He also liked to drink at these places. This inevitably led to many problems.
At dinner in a crowded restaurant, Dan would mortify his son and wife with loud, rude comments about blacks, Jews and Democrats. Shirley would get on him about it, but that just made it louder and worse. Others would stare. Shirley was convinced that some day someone would take a swipe at him.
Stan was horrified, but stuck between a rock and a hard place. If he made a stink about it, he knew the old man would get more belligerent. So he would just sit there and take it, his skin crawling with slimy emba
rrassment.
It was moments like this that he despised his father with a venom.
Driving home was hazardous, but Dan always figured out a way to navigate the car safely. Sometimes Shirley and Stan would scream when they were convinced the car was going to ram another vehicle from behind, but miraculously it never happened.
Dan also liked to stop at Joe’s to eat by himself, and then he would bring food home for the family. The problem was that Joe’s often had an hour’s wait or more. Dan would sit in the bar and drink Stanerinos.
Joe’s maitre’d was a blonde-haired woman named Babs. She was hot stuff, with an hourglass, Marilyn Monroe figure. She was not married, preferring to play the field and sleep around. She had affairs with many of the men who patronized Joe’s, and this included a short fling with Dan.
Babs’ brother was a Naval Academy graduate, and a hotshot aviator, but he had been shot down in Vietnam. This was the beginning of the end for Babs, who idolized him and never truly recovered. Both her parents were dead, and her brother was the light of her life. When he died, she began to drink too much. Her shapely figure took on a porcine quality, and eventually she would fade into old age as a never-married old maid.
One day Dan walked in to Joe’s and told Babs he wanted a table.
“How come you haven’t called me?” she asked him, because he had not come around in months.
“I’ve been busy,” Dan replied.
Babs was miffed. Dan was in by himself, eating there instead of taking out. He disdained the counter or the tables set aside near the bar area. The place was packed, and Dan sat by himself, drinking and stewing for almost two hours while Babs called every Tom, Dick and Harry for their tables.
Dan was convinced that many who arrived after him were being seated ahead of him. This was Babs’ doing. He held his tongue. Finally, fed up and annihilated on Bourbon, he gave up and stormed out of the place, pissed.
The drive home was dangerous. He had to negotiate the narrow San Pedro streets, then the curvy coast-hugging road that leads up the Palos Verdes Peninsula. He barely avoided several cars and made it home by the grace of God.
The next time he came to Joe’s, with his family, Dan lit into Babs like a manager dressing down an umpire. He pointed his finger in her faced, telling her she was fat and didn’t care how “Goddamn big your fucking tits are.”
Dan later apologized, but for years after that there was major tension between Babs and the Taylor’s, exacerbated by Stan’s flippant attitude towards her. When he reached driving age in high school, Stan would patronize the restaurant with his smart-ass pals.
As time passed and Babs looks faded, her prospects did, too. She was abrasive and men, who tolerated her attitude when she filled out a dress in a way that made them hard, were less generous when the lines formed on her face and the flesh grew fatty on her thighs and hips. She was a lousy screw anyway. She refused to give head, and just lay there, frigid. She never had an orgasm in her life. For the most part, the men in her life were one-night-stands or married guys on a fling. They were not the type to go down on her and take the time to please and fulfill her needs. They usually just pulled out, came on her, and departed.
The Palos Verdes/San Pedro community was a close knit one, and rumors were rampant. At some point, Babs heard that Dan had left Shirley. She was exhilarated at this piece of news. Shirley came in to Joe’s with Stan a short time later, not because Dan had left her, but because they had been Christmas shopping and one of their traditions was a meal at Joe’s after such an excursion. Babs smiled, pulled Shirley off to the side, and said, “I hear we’re both in the same boat.”
“What do you mean?” asked Shirley.
“I heard Dan left you,” said Babs.
“No, that’s not true,” replied Shirley. “Who told you that?”
“It’s just what I heard,” said Babs, walking away. Her heart was pierced by knowledge that Shirley had not been abandoned, as she felt she had been abandoned, by life.
CHAPTER FOUR
STUPIDKID
“My child arrived just the other day
He came to the world in the usual way
But there were planes to catch and bills to pay
He learned to walk while I was away
And he was talkin' 'fore I knew it, and as he grew
He'd say, ‘I'm gonna be like you, Dad’
‘You know I'm gonna be like you’”
--“CATS IN THE CRADLE”
By Harry Chapin