Running with Monsters Read online

  As kindergarten loomed, my parents became concerned about the local school district and didn’t particularly want me attending public school in Indio with a bunch of Mexican kids whose parents were farther down the social scale than they were. They thought I might do better with a Catholic school education, so Helen covered the furniture with old sheets to protect it from dust and boarded up the house to await our eventual return and we left to be with my dad in Inglewood, which, in those days, was white—and safe—as milk. Besides providing me with what they thought would be a better education, the move would also save my dad his three-hour commute to the desert to be with us on the weekends.

  Idie didn’t change once we were all living together full-time. He was a full-time character. I left the house to go to school one morning and was stopped dead in my tracks by what I saw in the driveway. There, already surrounded by the neighborhood kids, was a golden two-seat sports car. Maybe it was an MG. Maybe it was a Triumph. It was hard to tell since the front end had been reworked. There, in midroar, with a fixed, thousand-yard stare and a frozen tongue, was the skillfully preserved head of what had once been a living, breathing African lion. It really was a testament to both the taxidermist’s and the auto body worker’s art. It had been painted gold to match the rest of the car. It was the weirdest fucking thing I had ever seen, but also the coolest. Idie had been out drinking the night before and overheard some guy who boasted about his custom car. Idie chatted him up and went out to the lot to have a look at it. After he saw the one-of-a-kind creation, and with several drinks in him, he had to have it, so he bought it on the spot. Helen wasn’t happy about it.

  “What the heck is that … thing?” she asked.

  “Baby, it’s custom. There isn’t another one like it anywhere!” he said.

  “It’s hideous,” she said. “And it’s impractical. There’s only room for two in it.”

  “Well, we still have the station wagon for you to haul the kids in … but this has a real lion’s head right on the front! I’ll have to see if I can get a horn that roars.”

  “It’s ridiculous,” said Helen.

  She may have hated it, but I dug it. The kids in the neighborhood were impressed and I basked in the reflected glory of being the son of the guy who had a car with a real lion’s head on it. You didn’t see stuff like that in sixties suburbia. Not in Inglewood. Not in Palm Desert, where our other house sat idle. Probably not anywhere. And it had a radio, which I was allowed to control whenever I’d ride with Dad. The hits never stopped. Thanks to the AM radio of the day, I was constantly exposed to a wide variety of music. For anybody who didn’t experience it, Top 40 AM radio of the sixties and early seventies was like nothing that’s followed since. Stations played the best of everything in every genre. You’d hear poppy British Invasion stuff followed by James Brown’s haunted screams followed by some twangy Jerry Reed country followed by jangly California folk rock followed by Carole King followed by who knows what. And on and on it went for twenty-four hours a day, only broken by the staccato ads for Clearasil, Marlboro cigarettes, local auto dealers, and the rest of the things that teens and young adults couldn’t live without. Now radio’s dominated by format and you get the best of nothing … or you get talk. The commercials are pretty much the same.

  But things started going wrong. Dad’s business was collapsing fast. Neon advertising was in its death throes as cheaper and less delicate plastic signs began to take over the market. You know that line in 1967’s The Graduate, where Dustin Hoffman is pulled aside and told the future is “just one word: plastics”? It turned out to be true. Plastic signs were the future and the future had arrived. Idie refused to—or couldn’t—adapt to the reality of the times. We had to sell the Inglewood house and move into an apartment in nearby Culver City. It wasn’t a bad place, by any stretch. It was upscale and roomy, but an apartment was a step down. At least we had the house in Palm Desert. Still, they managed to send me to Catholic schools like St. Frances X. Cabrini and St. Augustine, and that’s where I had my first sense of the cultural power of rock music. Up until I was about eight, I just liked music because of the way it sounded. It wasn’t anything I could specifically explain, but one day, in the after-school company of a friend named Jimmy Beeman, I began to grasp how the adult world was threatened by it. The day’s burden of school behind me, I walked to Jimmy’s house past the well-kept lawns and flower beds of our new neighborhood. Cradled carefully inside my windbreaker was a 45 rpm record. It was “Light My Fire,” a cover of the Doors’ hit by a blind Puerto Rican guitarist named José Feliciano. The record had become a hit and I was fascinated by its Latin feel and Feliciano’s mastery of the guitar. I found Jimmy in his front yard.

  “You have to hear this!” I said excitedly. We went into his front room, where his folks had a hi-fi system similar to the one my folks had back home. Big, wood, and loud. We turned it on and placed the record on the spindle. The smoky groove filled the room and Feliciano sang, his voice quavering, “Girl, we couldn’t get much higher.” Jimmy and I stood there, eyes closed while we bobbed our heads in time to the beat like a couple of cool street-corner hipsters … or at least as close to that as a couple of third graders could gin up. We were lost in the sound when—scratch! “What do you boys think you’re doing?!?” Jimmy’s mom demanded, and shook us back to reality. She had ripped the needle off the record.

  “B-but, Mom!” Jimmy stammered. He was embarrassed, but I could tell by the look in his eyes that he was scared too. That’s when he pointed an accusatory finger at me and blurted out, “It’s Bob’s record, Mom!”

  What a little sellout, I thought as Jimmy’s mom turned her fury on me. “Bob Forrest! What makes you think it’s okay to bring this trash into my home? I think it’s time for you to go home.” She shoved the record back in my hand and frog-marched me to the front door. She shoved me out onto the walkway and slammed the door behind me.

  That was crazy, I thought, and walked home. I hoped she hadn’t scratched the record when she grabbed it off the turntable. When I got home, Helen was there to greet me at the door. She wasn’t happy. “Jimmy’s mother just called,” she said. “What were you thinking?” she demanded.

  “It’s just a record, Mom!”

  “It is not just a record, mister! There are grown-up … things in that song that little boys shouldn’t be hearing.” She paused for a moment and I searched my brain for what, exactly, those things might be. “And that Jim Morrison and those Doors of his are very bad people!” she added. Now I was totally confused. I had seen the Doors on TV and I thought they were cool. It wasn’t even a Doors record Jimmy and I had played. Not long after Jimmy’s mom had her little living-room freak-out, I watched the 1968 World Series with Idie on television. Feliciano played the national anthem. Like his records, his performance had a distinct Latin flair and was just … cool. Hip. Idie didn’t say anything. He didn’t have to. The world was changing all around him, and there was nothing he could do to bring things back to the way they used to be. It was pretty clear that things weren’t going to turn around in the neon advertising business. And so, after fighting against the tide, my dad realized the game was lost and decided to retire. He uprooted the clan and brought all of us back to Palm Desert for the country club life.

  Although we still had the house, it was a weird situation and one I couldn’t quite figure out. We didn’t have money like we used to have and I was old enough to sense the change. We still managed to keep ourselves enrolled at the fancy Indian Wells Country Club, though. Idie had cooked some deal through which we kept our membership and could maintain the appearance of success, but I didn’t realize what kind of bargain he had made. I found out. One day, when I was twelve or thirteen, I was out near the golf course with my friends when one of them asked, “Man, is that your dad?” He sounded horrified.

  Before I could figure out what he was talking about, another of my friends chimed in with, “That is your dad!”

  I turned and saw Idie ride up on a
big, industrial lawn mower. He was dressed like a gardener. The other kids kind of chuckled. “Hi, Bobby! You and your friends having fun?” And then he drove off, pushing the rattling contraption back toward the fairway. “Your dad’s the gardener, man!” teased one of my friends, and they all had a laugh. It was fucked up and I felt embarrassed. In one quick step, I went from being the son of the cool guy who ran his own business and had once owned car with a real lion’s head to the spawn of the stumblebum groundskeeper. I looked around at my friends as they hooted. What a bunch of spoiled brats, I thought as I watched these shallow young desert princes. In that crystal-clear moment, I realized that I was just like them: an insufferable, overindulged punk. It was time to get used to a new reality. If it was a rude awakening for me, it must have been even harder for Idie. His drinking increased and his genial moods were sometimes replaced by others that left us kids baffled. Where he had once been tolerant, even indulgent, of our love for rock and roll, he grew ever more impatient with the music we loved.

  Jane had just gotten a copy of the newest release by the Beatles, Abbey Road. We decided to listen to it on the big hi-fi in the living room. We bounced and bobbed to the sinuous groove as John Lennon sang about flat-tops, Ono sideboards, and spinal crackers on the album’s opener, “Come Together.” We kicked our shoes off and worked up static electricity as our socks rubbed against the deep pile of the carpet. Every now and then, one of us would playfully tag the other and release a sharp, brief shock.

  “Ow! Quit it, Bobby!” squealed Jane.

  Just then our fun was interrupted when the room went dead quiet. Jane and I stood there staring at each other. “What just happened?” We turned and saw Idie, solemn as a prosecuting attorney, gently lift Abbey Road from the turntable deck and place it back in the paper sleeve and then slide that into the cover that showed the former mop-tops as they crossed an English street. Jane and I looked at our dad, perplexed. He put the record down on top of the hi-fi cabinet and addressed us. It felt like we were in court. He cleared his throat and said, very calmly, “Don’t listen to this goddamn jigaboo music in the living room, kids.” Then he walked out of the room.

  Jane picked up her record. “What’s ‘jigaboo music’?” I asked her. Idie had never kicked about the Beatles before. This was something new. How was “Come Together” any different from “Michelle”? They were both Beatles songs. To me, it was all rock and roll … and I liked it.

  Jane explained, “It’s not the Beatles, Bobby. It’s what they represent.” She took her record back into her room. I thought about what she said and fingered through my folks’ records. Pictures of various bandleaders and singers were on the jackets and all of them showed the men in suits and ties. Some of them even wore hats. The women were dolled up in haute couture, makeup perfect. The Beatles had ditched their matching suits several albums back. But Idie’s reaction was more than just a criticism of fashion.

  I couldn’t articulate it at the time, but all the profound changes in American culture that had come in the wake of the Kennedy assassination—and more importantly, all the changes and reversals that had happened to Idie—were symbolized and crystallized by John, Paul, George, and Ringo and the band’s evolving image. If there was a focal point of the cultural war and his own personal misfortune, it was these four young men from Liverpool. I understood what my sister had said: “It’s not the Beatles, Bobby. It’s what they represent.”

  I thought of the words of an earlier Beatles tune:

  You say you want a revolution.

  The battle lines had been drawn. My dad was on the side of what was old and in the way. I was a child foot soldier in the Army of Rock and Roll with all the changes it heralded. The new generation expressed its joys, outrages, and excesses through music. Its poets—Lennon, McCartney, Dylan—were saying things that mattered. And they were changing the culture; the signs were everywhere, in advertising jingles, television, and movies. It excited me, and that feeling only grew. Even the old guard fell under its sway. When Sammy Davis Jr., a member of Frank Sinatra’s Rat Pack, showed up for the 1968 Academy Awards decked out in a velvet Nehru jacket and love beads, you knew who was winning the war. America had changed at its core and the Forrest family changed right along with it.

  Now that I was in middle school, I reckoned if I could no longer be considered among the economically blessed, I could be among the reckless and dangerous. I could be an outlaw. It was no trouble to find other disaffected classmates. We were a bunch of little suburban troublemakers. Hoodlums in training. Our idea of fun was breaking into houses or gas stations. Not that theft was our thing. It was just fun to go where we weren’t supposed to be. In those days, there wasn’t the kind of security that you find now. It’s not like we were master burglars. We were just dumb kids with a crowbar. I was the ringleader. I think I got the position because they all saw me as this tough kid from Los Angeles, someone who had been around and who was on his own a lot. A typical ruse for nighttime trouble was the old sleepover gambit.

  “Hey, Mom,” I’d say. “I’m going spend the night at Tommy Palletti’s tonight.”

  “Okay, Bobby. Have fun,” she’d say, and I’d be gone. It was pretty easy to pull off. None of our group’s parents communicated much with each other, so nobody ever called to check. Besides Tommy Palletti, there was Scotty Simms and David Vaughan. We’d meet at the Indian Wells Country Club, the same place where Idie had his gardening gig, on the links after dark. Maybe there were some anger issues I subconsciously tried to work out, but the club was also a convenient and easy target. There were no security guards in those days. A golf course at night can be a great place to make mischief. We’d steal golf carts and hold demolition derbies. I learned that even if you’re involved in petty crime, there is no way on earth to ever look cool in a golf cart. Of course, our pranks started to draw some attention. After one late-night spree during which several carts were wrecked, the local paper, the Desert Sun, had a front-page story with a headline that screamed, “Vandals Cause $5,000 Damage at Course.”

  I was at school when Tommy ran up to me holding a tattered copy of the Desert Sun in his hand. He shook with excitement. “Holy crap, man! Did you see this? They’re talking about us! This is so cool!”

  “You idiot! Shut up about that. If we talk about it and wave newspapers around, we’re going to get caught. Do you want to go to juvie?”

  “Juvie” was a place no kid wanted to go, even if it would validate that you were a genuine little teenage outlaw. I figured we had better cool our activities at Indian Wells. There’d be no more golf cart bumper cars at night for a while. But that was okay and didn’t faze any of us too much. We lived out in the desert. There was always something to do. We found a new, more dangerous pursuit. Not far from where we lived was a wash that cut through the desert hardpan. When the flash floods would come from the summer monsoons and the usual winter rains, it shunted off the water. Mostly, though, the wash stayed dry. Miles Avenue cut across it and there was an overpass that provided a perfect place to hide, especially at night. It became our new place to meet. Back in those days, before people became concerned about the environment, the desert was seen as one big wasteland. Have old tires? Old furniture? Rusted-out appliances? Don’t haul them to the dump. You have the world’s biggest dump right out your back door. With a little bit of effort, there was no limit to what a group of enterprising, socially maladjusted kids could find if they didn’t mind a little hiking. Old tires were the big prize to us. We’d find one and kick it hard several times.

  “Never just pick them up,” said David Vaughan.

  “Yeah, man,” said Tommy Palletti. “There could be a rattler or a nest of scorpions hiding in there.”

  You had to be careful when you played in the desert. Just about everything out there had evolved to cause damage. We kids were no different. We liked to break stuff. After we’d find a tire, we’d roll it back to the bridge near Miles Avenue. There, hidden by darkness and the structure itself, we would watc
h for auto or truck headlights as they approached.

  “Here comes one!” Tommy said in a loud whisper.

  “Sounds like a Beetle,” David said as we all listened to the low and distinctive chug of that ubiquitous sixties car.

  I’d watch the lights approach and calculate the car’s speed against that of a well-pushed tire. When the moment was right, I’d hiss, “Bombs away!” and send the rubber juggernaut on a collision course with the approaching vehicle. We never caused an accident or any injuries, but sometimes there were dents and broken headlights. If we connected, we’d fall back under the bridge and suppress fits of laughter while the perplexed motorist would pull to the shoulder and inspect his vehicle. We’d especially get off if the driver knew the score and yelled something into the darkness. “As soon as I get home, I’m calling the police, ya little turds!” They were fun times for me. I remained leader of our little crew until another city boy arrived in town. His name was Forrest too, only that was his first name. He was the son of a recently hired DJ at the local radio station. He had been around too. First in New York and then San Francisco. He claimed his father had written the 1950s song “Earth Angel.” I have my doubts, but it was a good story and it gave him some credibility. He was a sharp kid too. He knew that if he wanted to call the shots in our little group, he’d need to let us all know who was boss. It took him about two days to come up with a simple but effective plan. It didn’t involve much beyond kicking my ass after school. He did a thorough job and left me a battered mess. There was a new boss in town. I knew that I couldn’t beat him in a fight, so I did the next smartest thing. I ingratiated myself with him. We became buddies. It’s good to be number one, but if you can’t have that, you might as well be second in command. Forrest and Forrest. Mayhem Incorporated. It was all a lot of fun, but I couldn’t stay out every night. Things would get lively at home sometimes with Idie and Helen’s drunken feuding and fussing, but I had an out. I’d escape and find weekend sanctuary with my eldest sister, Jane, who, by this time, had left home to live with her husband, Larry, a couple hours’ drive away in suburban Whittier, California. She and Larry were good, normal people, and their house was a nice change from mine, where Idie played gardener and drank and Helen didn’t know what to do except pick at him and wind him up. A lot of the time, my sister Susan acted as my surrogate mother out there in the desert. Our other sister, Nancy, could be a real handful. Unreliable. Selfish. Manipulative. Always a party person. Very beautiful, but very wild.