Cruising in a Silver Corvette
So bright it always felt like daylight: A Hollywood Boulevard memory.
Cruising the boulevard was part of my growing up years, during college and before I knew much of anything, even though I thought otherwise, era 1965. I’m not talking here about Van Nuys Boulevard that cut the Valley in half going north to south, Wilshire Boulevard that intersected the city east to west, or even Pacific Coast Highway winding its way from San Diego to San Francisco and north. The Boulevard I’m talking about is Hollywood where the action was best on a Friday night along the Strip, centered at Hollywood and Vine and extending blocks between LaBrea and Gower.
Fridays were iconic, end of the week revelry. We could let off steam, release the week’s study stress, test our adventurous selves, and flirt from the safety of the front seat of the car. We cruised west to east, until the razzle dazzle lights gave way to seedier, single-story mom and pop stores. We knew then it was time to turn, go around the block and do the circuit again. Our landmarks were the Walk of Fame and Grauman’s Chinese Theatre. The Capitol Records building stood erect in the distance, a thirteen-story pile of vinyl. The Strip was a sparkle of glitz, clubs, street girls, red taillights, and ogglers looking for a meet up before any of us knew the definition of HIV-AIDS and STDs. The illumination bounced off four-story glass encased buildings and it felt like the night would never end. Rarely did we ever meet anyone, but the thrill was in the cruising, the looking and determining who might qualify as a potential date based on the type of wheels he drove. We were good for about an hour and a half, and never really got going much before nine when the street was most alive. The glamour of old Hollywood still embraced us, children of the sixties. I figured out how to balance the immediate desires of a Saturday night date with the far-reaching ideals of Vietnam war and Civil Rights protest. These did not seem incompatible then.
We always ended up at Tiny Naylor’s at the corner of LaBrea and Sunset for a pre-midnight snack before heading back to Beverly Hills, another world, far from where I grew up at the far north end of the San Fernando Valley, where the Pacoima Low Riders occasionally ventured beyond their purview. The Strip was different. It was filled with promise and possibilities, of being discovered and finding oneself. Here, the college frat boys from UCLA and USC could strut their stuff behind the wheels of Chevvy Malibu convertibles, cherry Pontiac GTOs with dual chrome pipes, and an occasional MGB. Those of us who were raised on the car culture of Southern California know how important wheels were to our identity. We were what we drove. We could live in a shack or a cheap third floor walk-up apartment on the edge of Studio City, but if we drove an Impala or Firebird, life opened to all propspects, and we could obscure our roots. All I wanted then was to be groovy.
I met Liz my sophomore year in college when I was eager to belong. She had already been a member of a sorority for a year when I went through rush the second time after being rejected on the first round as a freshman. Persistent, I always wanted a life beyond the small, boxy, four-bedroom house six blocks from the local state college where I was relegated to attend by parents whose myopic vision truncated opportunity. They didn’t want me going away, and I knew that since I entered the teen years. They said they couldn’t afford the lofty $125 per quarter tuition at UCLA, let alone room and board. I should be content to get a good enough education at $25 per year, what it cost then to take up to fifteen credit hours a semester. I was a study in how to become content, but beneath was a seething young woman eager to break out beyond the constraints of living in what felt like a straight-jacket, remote from community and culture, where housing was cheap and becoming more plentiful post WWII.
I was tethered to a mother and father who always argued over money, and two much younger siblings who took over the tiny living room with high-pitched woodwind practice and oboe-reed making. I never invited friends home. Instead, I pursued other outlets--mostly boys and dates, dance moves, and an unlimited imagination for more and different. At age fourteen, my mother took me to a dermatologist to control acne. His solution was to prescribe birth control pills. Years later, she confessed she thought I was sexually active then, though in reality I managed to hang on to my virginity until age eighteen. Now, I wonder if it wasn’t she who suggested that prescription to him!
Liz became my big sister although she was a year younger than me. Her job was to acculturate me into the ways of belonging, conforming, becoming compliant. I was an average student, although I know we both ended up at the state college, not because we weren’t smart enough, but because we never tried hard enough. Today, I think that my NOT getting good grades was another underlying way of rebellion. Liz lived in Beverly Hills and drove a 1962 silver Corvette. She didn’t need to work while I always held down a work-study job. I’d never known anyone like her, and I was impressed. The Vette was the ultimate muscle car and driven by a girl, no less. The best I could do was borrow my father’s 1956 two-toned blue Buick Convertible on the weekends to spend time with her in the city where life was much more interesting, and dreamy. My dad, who always lived on the brink of poverty, equipped that car with retread tires because he could never afford to buy a new set. The cloth top had rips and needed replacing. In 1964, his annual income as a Los Angeles City Schools history teacher might have just topped six thousand dollars. Liz’s parents went through twelve thousand a month.
Liz loved to cruise. I spent most Friday nights at her house, a sprawling ranch with a circular drive on North Rexford between Santa Monica and Sunset, on the flats in the heart of Beverly Hills, just a few streets over from where Bugsy Siegel was murdered in the summer of 1947. Nate ‘n Al’s Deli on Beverly Drive was our favorite Saturday brunch spot after we made the morning stop at the bank on the corner of Wilshire and Rodeo Drive. Sometimes, we would take home bagels and lox to spread on the expansive kitchen island, the room that separated the adult from children’s sleeping wings of the house. Liz had her own bathroom, decorated in pink towels and gold fixtures. Through the floor to ceiling glass walls of the living room, I could see the swimming pool flanked by a cabana and the maid’s quarters, sheltered by mature palms and a lush flower garden. Her two much younger brothers were cared for by a nanny.
Her dad, not her real dad, but the man who adopted her in Chicago when he married her mom, was a lawyer who, I later came to learn, had ties to the Mob. Along with Siegel, Meyer Lansky, and Stanley Korshak, Liz’ dad had his hand in creating the Las Vegas as we know it today. He was not a handsome man, but he was tall, powerful, of ample frame and protruding belly that said, Don’t fuck with me. What I remember about him most were his impeccable handmade suits that Liz said came from a personal tailor in Hong Kong, and his very prominent and wide hooked nose. Her mom drove a baby blue Lincoln Continental convertible with clam-shell doors, conspicuously parked mid-circle in front of the imposing carved wood double doors of the house entrance. She was a petite woman with dark curly hair and turned-up nose. Her first husband, a Chicago school teacher and Liz’s dad, must have been bought out before they moved west. Liz didn’t know him.
The bank account was in Liz’ name. I usually waited in the lobby while Liz went in, presented her identification, and descended beyond my sight into the depths accompanied by an assistant manager, where access to money was protected by keys and codes. She emerged weekly with a nine by twelve manila envelope stuffed with cash. Once, she told me she took out three thousand each time to turn over to her parents to cover household expenses. It was the mid-sixties. I’d never heard of that much money, let alone seen denominations of one-hundred-dollar bills. It was then that I realized her dad must have been hiding something or involved in something shady. It’s likely the house and everything in it was in Liz’ name, too, though I couldn’t say that for a fact.
The next year, Liz got a brand-new 1966 British Racing Green Austin-Healy 3000. It had a manual transmission and was hot. When we rode the Strip, heads turned. The dashboard, steering wheel and gear shifter were fashioned from polished burled mahogany and the seats smelled like that caramel-colored glove leather that only luxury car makers used then. I sat shotgun, stroking the seat, feeling the raised stitching that created the curves and comfort that only money can buy. Four years later, I had a chance to buy my first car, a used version of this very same model, and my dad refused to co-sign the loan. I settled for a 1965 Mustang four-speed, three forward gears, one-reverse, that I could gun at a red light and hear the roar of the glass-pack muffler. Good enough.
What became of Liz and her parents? I don’t know. I have only one friend now that I can trace back to my college years, and it isn’t Liz. When I worked at The Glencoe Press, a subsidiary of Macmillan Publishing Company, at 8701 Wilshire Boulevard, my first real job as a junior copywriter out of college, Liz’ dad had an office on the top floor. I could type fast and accurately, and when he recognized me in the elevator, he asked me to do secretarial work for him pretty regularly. It might take me twenty-three minutes on my lunch hour. He always handed me a crisp twenty. But I was uncomfortable and then began to say I didn’t have time. Five years later, after I moved to San Francisco, Liz called to say she was visiting and could we meet. I showed up expecting an intimate catch-up. Instead, I joined a table of ten and we barely exchanged pleasantries. We never spoke again. Yet, the memory lingers.
Two Notes: (1) Please use the comment button to share your thoughts — so we can all read what you have to say! (2) Join us at the Oaxaca Women’s Creative Writing Workshop Retreat, January 2—8, 2025.
Love the memories....It certainly was a different time when we grew up in the 60's Love reading your thoughts....Take care Miss you.... Pos