Festival of Lights, Mill Valley Cottage Edition

By Anita Garner

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I met Itsie years ago in Mill Valley when he pulled his big blue van into the driveway next door. He was doing roof repairs for neighbor, Jerry. Itsie introduced himself. Real name Italo he said but everybody calls me Itsie.  He was perpetual motion, up and down that ladder all day. At a bit over five feet tall, in his 80s, he exerted an impressive amount of energy for anyone at any age.

Jerry told him I was writing a book about Southern Gospel music and by the way, had I ever heard of the Gaithers?  Sure. Anyone with ties to Southern Gospel knows the Gaithers. He loved their TV shows, watched them every week on one of the three channels he received via his antenna. He pointed in the direction of Mt. Tam, a defining feature of the town, and said he lived in a canyon with bad television reception. He wasn’t about to pay for cable TV so he got himself a DVD player. As soon as he learned to use it, he was going to buy some Gaither DVDs. Meanwhile he listened to music on a CD player someone gave him.

I invited him in for coffee. He was disappointed when I brewed a fresh pot. Didn’t I have any instant? It was cheaper. I should try it, save some money. He talked about the work he did on properties around town. “I’m just a fixit guy. Now my wife, May, she had all the brains.” From that first cup of coffee, no conversation ended without mentions of May, who’d passed away years ago. I gave him a CD of my parents’ gospel music.

I had just returned to the Bay Area, leaving Los Angeles soon after 9/11, homesick for Northern California. I found the sublet next door to Jerry while searching for something more permanent. All I needed was a small place with a room to write in and a redwood tree to look at. Mill Valley is not a rental town but Itsie said he might know of something.

He liked to work on things, he told me, but May enjoyed buying properties, fixing them up and then not selling them. He still owned all the houses they’d bought decades ago and he still did the repairs. When he had a vacancy in one of his rentals, there was no advertising. You’d have to know someone who knew him and then he’d make a decision about you based on who knows what?  In our case, it might have been the gospel music. One of his cottages was about to be vacant and I could go take a look. It was love at first sight. It had enough quirks to suit any writer.

 

Itsie was a scavenger. He drove around town picking up things. He retrieved discards left behind by previous tenants. Most of his treasures had already been employed somewhere else at least once. A row of cupboards, doors of all sizes, windows with some real beauties among them, and enough lighting fixtures to power a showroom. He wasn’t a hoarder he assured me, he had plenty of room to store things and he could name everything in his inventory.

When repairs were needed at my cottage, the material he brought didn’t necessarily resemble the original, so there might be no logical visual transition, say from metal to wood or vice versa. One day he observed a downspout pouring rainwater in a direction that he considered wasteful. He attached a flexible extension hose all the way from the downspout by the front door, across the driveway and into a flower bed out front by the mailbox post. To give gravity an assist, he built supports from scraps of some other material to prop up his contraption. Nothing matched anything else. I returned home to this surprise and by the time I went inside I’d adjusted, as this cottage must have over the years, to Itsie’s particular additions.

He lived one road away, a quick walk over the creek, in Corte Madera Canyon. On my first visit to have a cup of instant coffee in his kitchen, I stood at the bottom of what appeared to be at least four flights of wooden steps zigging and zagging up his hill.

Elegant lights on wooden posts decorated the path all the way up to his stunning home. The lights, he assured me, were bought cheap from someone in The City.

A tour of his four-level home involved even more stairs. Everything stacked up, layer upon layer, culminating in a sort of redwood castle on a hill.

 

One level below his living space was a professional workshop with a huge storage area neatly arranged. The level below the shop was an entire floor designed by the original owner as an apartment  for live-in help. Itsie used it for his furniture rebuilding projects, The top level was a full-floor attic. Walking around up there we visited his family heritage, from Italy to California’s wine country, and his personal mementos from WWII, displayed as carefully as if a museum tour would be coming through any minute.

Back to this story’s starting place – the Christmas tree in the photo at the top of the page. I took this fuzzy picture to prove to my family in L.A. that I had decorated for my first season in the cottage. The tree was in the entryway, a space with absolutely no function but plenty of charm. Itsie found a bunch of old windows somewhere and formed a complete anteroom incorporating them. I hung the canvas curtains and we bought the long string of lights on one of our thrift shop trips. He wouldn’t dream of letting me pay retail, not even for Christmas lights.

He didn’t care much about Christmas, he said. Since May died, there weren’t any holidays he celebrated. On my next trip to his house, I carried a little Christmas tree already decorated. I encouraged him to put it on his kitchen table where he started each day listening to music, surrounded by redwood trees. At first he frowned, ready to reject the whole idea. He asked where I got it. Thrift shop, I said. Then he plugged it in.

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I’ll probably be writing about Itsie as long as I’m around. Here’s another story and there are others in these archives.

Itsie’s Table

Anticipation

 

Anticipation is the only thing I can control. It’s the looking-forward-to part of life and I get to decide when it starts and what it means. It’s a year-round necessity that puts the shine on everyday things if there’s any shine to be found.

Anticipation is head and shoulders above expectations, which can break your heart. It’s even more friendly than optimism.  Optimism is still an option, though I carry around memories of times when optimism stepped back and did nothing while I took my eye off the prize.  No offense, optimism, but sometimes you’re unreliable.

Anticipation isn’t just for holidays, though I’m writing this on the cusp of a season that includes lights and music and champagne and good coffee and pie. Looking-forward-to is a practice I was admonished against in childhood. The adults in my house cautioned “Don’t get your hopes up.” They missed the point. I’d already decided that anticipation isn’t hope, though it can be hope-adjacent.

Anticipation certainly isn’t the same as expectation. Expectations come with too much pressure and require depending on others.  I’m not brave enough anymore for a steady diet of that. Dodging expectations is a survival tool I’m sticking with.

I’ve always felt safest choosing my own level of enthusiasm. It helps create an interior life that I knew early on I’d be needing.  Today if I mention something I’ve decided to look forward to and someone responds with “Isn’t it a bit early…” I flip the listening switch to the off position before the rest of that sentence is finished. The best part about embracing anticipation is, it’s mine and it begins whenever I need it.

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Cranberry Prospects

 

By Anita Garner

It’s almost autumn and thoughts turn to New England. This is my only cranberry story and I’m especially fond of it.

One Sunday in Boston, my friends, Pam and Doctor Ed, read the paper at their kitchen table and spotted the ad about a big country house with acreage for sale in Maine. It came with a generous pond and was the perfect distance for weekend commutes. They put down the paper, drove to Maine and bought it.

On Fridays the good doctor turned into the long driveway leading to his own farm. An old-timer in the area said the locals who lived on the main road could set their clocks by him. “I look at the clock about suppertime on a Friday, I see the fancy car go by and I say, yep, here comes the doc-tah.”

The gorgeous spread with the big, two-story country house with acres all around was the perfect antidote for Dr. Ed, a busy surgeon who married Pam, one of my oldest and dearest. (Sidebar: They met at Stanford and I sang at their wedding on the patio of their hillside home in Woodside, California. My then-husband played piano while I sang their request, “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face.” It was a magical day.)

Back to Maine where Ed got himself a riding mower and set out every weekend to mow as much of his land as it took to achieve his desired level of relaxation. He loved that mower and Pam loved being a country host. It wasn’t long before all the neighbors knew her kitchen always offered coffee or something stronger to drink and good things to eat. Drop-ins were encouraged. All of this was lively entertainment for this California writer. Maine was love at first visit.

Sunday morning early, I laced up my walking shoes and set off to explore. There was a perfect autumn road at the end of the driveway, with trees on both sides showing off their colors alongside big old houses dotted here and there. This must be one of the most beautiful places in New England.

One particular house won the front porch prize. Rocking chairs, swings, various farm tools leaning nearby. As I came even with the porch, an older gentleman opened the screen door and stepped outside carrying his coffee mug. He stopped and stared at me. I waved. His attention was deliberate, as if we’d met somewhere before. I hesitated, the way you do when you’re trying to decide, do we know each other? He didn’t say anything so I moved on.

I wandered around awhile and when I circled back to the farm, Pam and Ed and the man I’d encountered on that porch were now at the kitchen table chatting. There was a whiskey bottle between the men, from which they dosed their coffee. Pam said, “This is our friend from California. Her first time in Maine. She’ll be here all week.”

He stood up and we shook hands. He wore overalls and galoshes. He was a photo from a vintage issue of Yankee Magazine. He continued to stare at me in the same, disconcerting way he had from his front porch. Nothing casual about this encounter. It wasn’t unfriendly, just intense.  He said, “I’ll be going” and we all said goodbye.

I asked Pam and Ed, “Well, wasn’t that odd?”

They told me their neighbor had seen me walk by and he hustled over to their house to ask if I was visiting there. They confirmed I was their guest and he decided to wait a while to see if I’d be back soon. He wanted to meet me. This wasn’t just a casual call. Pam said he mentioned he’d changed his shirt before stopping by. He was mate-shopping, looking for someone sturdy he told them. His wife died not long ago and he needed not just a wife but a farming partner, so he was assessing the possibilities. Evidently, I represented a potential farm implement and needed to be examined more closely to see if all parts were in working order. No offense. None taken. He may have been bereft but he was also a farmer with crops to harvest. Cranberries, they said. Fascinating process if I’d like to know more about it.

When I got back to Northern California, I did read about how cranberries are harvested in New England but I’d missed my chance to participate, missed it by just a few weeks. A new farm wife arrived soon. Sent by some stroke of providence or the result of a farmer’s wisdom? Perhaps a cranberry man who sets out with such specific requirements is sure to know the perfect bog-partner when he meets her, and he did, I heard, right after I left.

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A New Story!

The author, Nita Faye Jones 1950s  

“Her father was a Pentecostal minister who never told a lie in his life. Until he did. And it was so big, it stayed with the family forever.”

“The Only Lie” is my first appearance in Salvation South, a fascinating online magazine celebrating all things Southern, the people, the music, food, culture, stories, poetry and more. I’m pleased to be one of the writers featured there.

My new story is available to read online now and it’s free.  It’s from my book in progress. “Musical Houses” (working title) is a collection of stories and essays. It follows many of the characters from the book, “The Glory Road: A Gospel Gypsy Life”and introduces new ones. Many are part of the musical migration from the Deep South to Southern California in the 1950s.

Here’s a direct link to “The Only Lie.” https://www.salvationsouth.com/the-only-lie-anita-garner/

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Christmas, 2023

I haven’t sent Christmas cards in a while, though I love receiving yours and your newsletters and pictures. I hold memories close and this is a time for being in touch.

Until recently I lived in Mill Valley, California in a cottage surrounded by redwoods and fog. I loved every minute of it. Daughter, Cathleen and the grand, Caedan Ray lived in Woodland Hills. We commuted to visit from Northern to Southern California, reverse and repeat. Things change. I’m older. My immediate family is tiny. We decided to merge. Less time on I-5 and more time together. Sacramento is home base now. We lived here decades ago when Cath was little. In our neighborhood, it seems every time a home sells, the new occupants are San Francisco commuters.

An actor friend, mentioning a TV show or movie he’s in, prefaces it with “SSP” (Shameless Self Promotion) which is the only way we’ll know the what and the where, and I still don’t know a better way to update what I’m doing except with a bit of SSP. It’s been a while, so in case I haven’t mentioned it, I finally finished the book I was writing. It’s “The Glory Road: A Gospel Gypsy Life” published by University of Alabama Press. Sold everywhere. Updates will follow at www.anitagarner.com.

Libraries have always been the goal. I hope these stories about Southern musical pioneers, my parents among them, will always be available. Once in a while I need to drop in at a library to make sure it’s really happened. Friends sent this picture from Boston Public Library, one of the most beautiful libraries I’ve ever seen. Daddy and Mother are walking in some high cotton in this music section with Marvin Gaye and Judy Garland.

Many scenes in the book were previewed in theatre performances in Los Angeles years ago, when we put The Joneses, their family and other music makers onstage. Talented directors, actors, singers, musicians and audiences added the magic, bringing the stories to life.

The Joneses’ 1950s recording sessions have since been restored as “Fern Jones The Glory Road” released by music label, Numero Group. They re-mastered the album Mother recorded in Nashville for Dot Records and also preserved vintage tracks with both Daddy and Mother for downloading from an earlier album. Songs Mother wrote are featured today in movies and TV shows all over the world and their music is sold everywhere.

Director, Greg North Zerkle (https://gregorynorthactor.com) and I are headed back to theatres. We’re putting together a new play-with-music, this time, based on the book. Full circle. Stories-stage-book-stage. Rewrites are underway. Greg commutes between NYC and L.A and we work on the phone while he travels around, doing what he does, acting, singing, dancing, directing and what-all. When I hand over this version, he’ll search for a stage, maybe New York, maybe Los Angeles, and we’ll follow “The Glory Road” where it takes us.

On to the holidays. At Thanksgiving, the girls and I cooked every traditional Southern dish, the way we do every year, exactly the way Gramma K did it. For Christmas we decided on fireplace, lasagna, movie and dessert. I hope you enjoy the season exactly the way you choose.

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Click picture to visit my website

 

 

 

Lemonade?

They trimmed it but they didn’t say goodbye.

Every time I pass this building I wonder. Months after our town was struck by a series of storms that resulted in historic flooding and the incalculable loss of heritage trees, long after clean-up was finished, this one remains.

Last winter Sacramento endured major back to back storms that took down enormous trees, changed the look of neighborhoods and altered the canopy over William Land Park, a beloved oasis.

Fallen trees blocked streets and had to be cut down to moveable size. Crews worked overtime and the sound of saws continued from early morning until well after dark. In the morning we’d turn a corner and see another stack of giant tree limbs and slices of tree trunks awaiting pickup.  This work went on for weeks. The crews did a remarkable job of paring down the broken giants and every day through the clearing process, we were heartbroken.

Six months after the last storm and the tree at #6050 is still there.  I wonder, is the owner of the building, 1) Making an artistic statement, 2) Procrastinating 3)Demonstrating one possible answer to the question, what do you do when Mother Nature sends you a big bunch of lemons?

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https://www.anitagarner.com/

 

 

The Magic of Four O’Clock

Four o’clock is golden.  I can hear four o’clock coming, wearing a bell around its neck.

I feel four o’clock in my bones. It’s the turning point in the day. Time to exhale. Get up. Think about what’s next. Could be coffee. Could be something intoxicating. Only a rude person would suggest four o’clock is too early for that. It might be a walk around the block or aimless wandering into another room.

Four o’clock’s intent changes with the seasons. In winter, the light is leaving and there’s the pleasant prospect of an early evening by firelight. In summer, if I choose to follow the light, there’s plenty of time left to see where it leads.

Professional schedules these days are often malleable. We may still be accountable to somebody, but how we do it varies.  It’s our own business how we set our internal clocks.   Four o’clock insists I pay attention.  Time to tap into fresh resources and keep going or wrap it up for the day.

I’m guessing most of us have a magic hour, declared or not, a time when everything shifts.  Four o’clock is mine.

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Couple of links.

I’m still chatty  at Facebook

Click the picture for my website.  Projects and such.

 

Getting Nest-y

By Anita Garner

Sconce from
Maine artist, Steve Bradford

Temperatures in Northern California are finally slipping into flannel territory in the evening while I continue to ignore relentless sunshine during the day. I concentrate instead on arranging my surroundings to prepare for this favorite time of year.

Though I’m on the opposite side of the country, in the fall my soul communes with New England, with its four seasons and the independent spirit of the people I meet there. Friends who live in New England year-round like to remind me of the fifth season, the one that comes right after the snow melts and lasts for weeks – mud season. I ignore this, pick up my current copy of Yankee Magazine or watch episodes of “Weekends With Yankee” on PBS where autumn is embraced and everything feels comforting, well-loved, well-used and appreciated.

The only decorating style in evidence around here is that I seem to gravitate mostly to objects that look like they have a story to tell.  Some of my favorite things share certain qualities. Many are old and weathered.  If it has faded colors, if the paint is peeling, if some part of it is rusty, if it looks like it could give you splinters, chances are it’s coming home with me.

Steve Bradford, a dear friend and Maine artist, is responsible for some of my favorite art. He answers a question about the wood in this recent birthday gift received from him.

“I meant to tell you about the wood the candle sconce was made of. We’re close enough to the coast so there are fishermen and lobstermen living nearby (there’s a house on the next block with the yard stacked high with lobster traps). When a dory (smaller rowboat kept on a larger fishing boat) wears out, some of them get brought back inland and abandoned in the woods or a field. There was one in Durham where I’ve always taken the dogs to run. It was mostly red, with some blue and white trim. As it disintegrated I used to bring pieces of it home on a regular basis. The boat is gone now but I still see random pieces of red, white or blue wood near where it was. So the sconce was made out of wood from an authentic Maine saltwater fishing dory.”

There’s more of this beautifully aging wood in another piece. “The Writer” is  in a private collection but you can see it at his website under “Chairs.” Link at Steve’s name above.

 

“The Writer”

Now I’m on the lookout for my own big vintage chair with a matching ottoman, black or dark brown or maybe faded red leather, comfortably worn but with more years left in it for reading and looking through windows, watching leaves drift.

Secret Garden

By Anita Garner

Return of the Naked Ladies

Have you ever moved into a home previously inhabited by an avid gardener and watched as the seasons reveal what’s already been planted and lovingly tended?  I’ve lived many places and a couple of times before I’ve had the pleasure of watching unexpected gifts reveal themselves in gardens planned by someone else.

August in certain Northern California counties  is prime time for spotting Naked Ladies.  Driving through Napa and Sonoma and Marin Counties, rows of them line the road. Clumps pop up in cracks in concrete where it would seem nothing could grow. Now my family’s in Sacramento County where I hadn’t seen any so far this season.

I just returned from traveling, let the pups out, looked way back toward the fence and thought my eyes were playing tricks.  Naked Ladies. Right here in our own back yard.

This home and these gardens were brought to life by a dear friend over several decades.  We oohed and aahed over her beloved rose garden, the trees of all sizes that shade this place, the strawberry and tomato plants that march along the side fence. When Pam moved here decades ago, she was greeted by enormous asparagus ferns that still stand tall and carry their age well.

I don’t remember seeing these Naked Ladies here during her lifetime, but here they are, two big clumps of them, obscured earlier by that prolific rose garden.  One is tucked up against the back fence, nearly hidden by ferns, the other just peeked out from  behind a row of roses now finished with their blooming cycle.

I’m not so much a gardener as a garden appreciator. I’ve loved these Ladies for years and the only thing I knew about them is that they take their name from their stems with no leaves. Here’s more.

They’re in the lily family, starting life as a bulb. During the winter a plant with leaves appears, looking like any other plant.  Then the leaves die away and you can easily forget about them. A few months later during hot weather, up pops a bare stalk then another and another. They drop seeds which insure surprise sightings in years to come.  Once a bulb’s planted, you’ll never know how many will show up next season.

This has now exhausted most of the gardening words I know. More updates from the garden as nature provides.

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Unforgettable Morgan Williams

By Anita Garner

Three of us at KBIG Los Angeles mid 1980s
Sandra, Morgan, Anita

In this picture we’re on our way to El Compadre, a frequent stop just up  the Sunset Strip from the station, where margaritas and mariachis welcomed entertainment industry types.

I like social media’s “remember when” aspects and I like writing about unforgettable friends.  When I find pictures like this one I know I’m fortunate to have shared a chunk of life with these people.  Sandra Williams, on the left, worked the front desk at KBIG sometimes. She was also an extra in movies and last I heard, a makeup artist.  Morgan hosted a public affairs show for KBIG and I hosted afternoon drive.

Here’s what Variety said about Morgan when she died.

“August 3, 1999 12:00am PT

Morgan Williams, a longtime Los Angeles news and public affairs reporter, died July 24 at her home in Los Angeles after a short battle with lung cancer. She was 68.  After graduation from William and Mary U, she worked in the media in various locales around the country. During the 1960s, she worked as a news reporter for KABC, Channel 7, and KHJ, Channel 9, (now KCAL) in Los Angeles.

During the 1970s, she segued into radio, where she had a long stint with radio station KFI-AM, covering news and public affairs. During the 1980s and ’90s, she served as the public affairs director for KBIG radio, where she became known for her interviews on “The Big Picture.” During the late 1950s, she was married to Tony Williams, the late lead singer of the Platters.  She is survived by a son.”

I’m guessing Variety got part of that information from Don Barrett, whose laradio.com “Where Are They Now” archives are still the go-to for information about anyone who was ever on the air in Los Angeles.

Variety doesn’t mention how Morgan named her big old sedan “Diana” in honor of Miss Ross, and how she loved that car so much only one mechanic was allowed to work on it.  Variety doesn’t tell you about her devotion to her sports teams and her crush on Kareem Abdul Jabbar, whom she interviewed several times because she loved him and because she could.

Another thing that doesn’t fit into an obit, but it played a big role if you hung out with Morgan – she hated freeways and refused to drive them.   Getting around in Southern California without using freeways requires a whole different set of navigation skills and guarantees the driver will arrive late for many functions. If you loved the driver a lot, you sat outside on Sunday morning at Farmers Market until Diana rolled into the parking lot at 3rd and Fairfax.

That smile, that big beautiful smile of hers, she loved to tell how she got it.   After her Mama died, Morgan inherited a sum that she planned to spend on something she’d always wanted, a smile to resemble Diana Ross.  Most of us thought Morgan’s smile was already dazzling but she wanted veneers that were bigger, the biggest that would fit, so she got herself some.

Today Karin Moss and I have been friends for several years because of Morgan. Karin contacted Don Barrett at laradio.com looking to find Morgan and he sent her to me because he knew Morgan and I were friends.  Karin had worked in the record business in Hollywood with Morgan way back before I knew her. Karin and I both live in Northern California so we met for breakfast to share Morgan stories and we’ve been getting together ever since.

As we traded details about our experiences with Morgan, we learned this was a lady who’d reinvented herself several times.  I see reinvention stories woven through many careers in entertainment and each time I write about someone, I hear from someone else who knew them in a different way.

Back then, just before that Variety obit, my last lunch with Morgan was on the calendar. I arrived in Santa Monica expecting a nice catch-up but she was a no-show.  I called her work phone number and they told me she was very ill.  She’d chosen not to disclose it to any of us.

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