How to Take an Intermission  from Life’s Dramas

by M. L. Klein
Any day dream will do.
As for myself, I picture a place, oh, let’s say in the Provence Alpes-Cote d’Azur.
There, I take my bicycle with the wine box tote down to the town
marketplace daily to gather still-warm baguettes from the crusty baker, aged meats from the fresh butcher, ripe vegetables from the spoiled-rotten produce girl and jolie fleurs from the decidedly seedy flower seller, an item every bit as as important as groceries.
The buxom bouquet will grace my prettily tiled breakfast table, bright with the reflected gilt of sunshine on copper pots. Once home, dear kitties get a treat of frothy goat’s milk fresh from Daisy who keeps more trim the back expanse of my petite chateau than herself, yes, just outside the dutch door of my kitchen where blithe blossoms of wisteria shadow dance on sun-kissed walls.
In my day dream, there may be people as improbable & imperfect as myself but their sense of play is entertaining. There is never a bad night at their theater.

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A Neighborhood Getaway

by M. L. Klein
Why, it’s Mamacita’s Especiyal Espangnoly Ranchero Marketito
and Carnecito (something like that) right up there on Vine Street at Barton across from LAUSD’s excuse for a middle school just yonder. Look for the corner where the ‘The Cactus’ sits & the sign that boasts “The Best Tacos In Hollywood”
Maybe, maybe not, but it sure is the cutest taco stand in town.
Where was I?
Oh, yes…the Ranchero market.
Carumba!!! What deals on produce.
3 pounds of sweet-smelling oranges for $1.00
2 pounds of firm Roma tomatoes for $1.00
White onions not long from the farm .49 cents a pound
and so much more.
Now, as a bargain beaver, I can’t fault the 99 Cent Store on all their produce but for most everyday vegetables the expiration date is 5 minutes before you get home.
The Ranchero meat counter has competitive prices but nothing to make your sombrero spin. Yet, that scent of sawdust is compelling and you just know this is the place to get serious steaks positively dripping with juicy goodness. And treat yourself to a selection of exotic cuts never seen at a gringo supermarket like Ralph’s such as chicken feet & pig hooves.
Now, try not to dwell on the fact one of the Ranchero butchers accidentally cut off his hand awhile back. It was the buzz of the neighborhood and everyone was shocked & saddened to hear of this…also, hesitant to go shopping anytime soon. But, life is back to normal and you’ll have a very pleasant shopping experience at Ranchero. There you will mingle with the carefree immigrant class and the flocks of children and aproned grandmothers that come with them.
Expect to get happy feet listening to their sparkling Mariachi Muzak while you browse down the aisles. Don’t miss the many marvels inside the Blue Bunny Ice Cream chest. At check out, you’ll hear no ping of a scanner, only the ka-ching of a hand-operated register. The cashier will give you a smile as broad and golden as a crescent moon when you bid adios to your new found amigos on Vine street.
You leave feeling there really ought be a burro outside to carry your bounty down the dusty trail home. This would leave you free to jingle the jumble of coins left in your pocket.
In any case, you think to whistle that last tuba tune…how did it go now?

The Idea of a Finer Life
by M. L. Klein
I was born in 1948 along with a lot of other babies. Seattle, where I grew up, was a port city mix of gentry and industrialists with iron inerds both, not unlike its first settlers, a party of God-fearing capitalists. Seattleites were decent-minded sorts who received newcomers at the end of WWII without reservations. Seattle society had its old guard but our parents built their lives in the commons of the same social order. Outside its walls the pursuit of happiness was a fool’s errand. It would find you. There was just no foreseeing the changes when a revolution happened in the 1960s. The rebellion was of infantile nature. The post-war generation took to servicing their own self-interests & appetites which spawned any number of utopian ideologies seemingly to justify conduct wanton by any other measure. It was a cultural coup and the common good was never heard from again. It seemed when President Kennedy was assassinated his inaugural mandate to the contrary was, too.
Black Friday, the end game of ever indulgent generations since, is the final degraded act of a society glutting on its own carnage.
Humor me, then, as I revisit yesteryear. Nostalgia is what remains to calm elders at the frights witnessed the day following Thanksgiving just hours after Americans presumably thanked their Creator and prayed for His many more blessings. It was a time when we baby-boomers were impossibly young and Christmas shopping brought families downtown.
There was a Downtown, then.
While the sidewalks were trafficked with shoppers, there was a solemnity to the streets at Christmas season except for the tireless tinkle of the Salvation Army bell, since banned in some quarters as offensive, understandably, to peoples of other faiths. Parents would hold their children’s mittened hands before storefront windows and the moving dioramas therein, mostly to do with toy shops at the North Pole and their inhabitants. Santa Claus waited patiently for you in his Hearing Room just beyond. Looking back, I now realize the person whose lap I sat upon was actually Santa Claus, himself. There were no Big-Marts back then. There were department stores. But, mainly, in Seattle, there was Frederick & Nelson, the pride of Marshall-Fields in the Northwest. Walking through their portals at Christmas, held open by fanciful doormen, was to step inside the fairyland of a Faberge egg. The scent of finery, fragrance and Frango-Mint chocolate wreathed one’s head. Career clerks knew their good customers by name. There were areas called The Millinery Department, The Fine Furs Department, the Gloves Counter not far from The Hosiery Counter whose stockings were held up by girdles found in the Ladies Lingerie Department. For such unmentionables, matrons were fitted within curtained chambers by attentive saleswomen who wore measuring tapes around their necks and pencils in their hair buns. I don’t recall piped-in music, but back then there were gentle pings punctuating the air like the audible summons of an invisible entity. Was it a call for ready assistance? I think so. There were elevator operators sporting epaulets reciting the itinerary of floors so passengers were delivered to right destinations as they stepped outside of their vertical carriage. Then, there was the forbiddingly formal Tea Room on the top floor and the casual coffee shop way downstairs. The Paul Bunyan Room bustled with the hurried shoppers and waitresses as unflappable as the starched peaks of their bodice handkerchiefs. Over the din of customer chatter and the clatter of crockery, you mouthed your order carefully; “A…Club-Sandwich…And A…Coca Cola, Please”. There were features in the marbled suites of the Ladies Restroom you don’t see today such as wall dispensers of perfume which issued a lavish spritz of White Shoulders or Arpege by Lanvin. Sometimes, tester bottles were set out near the basins. They did not disappear. Somewhere in the stack of floors above was a well-appointed Lounge Room. Today, there are public places to loiter, loaf, linger…but to “lounge”? It’s a lost custom.
In this same sitting salon there were a few simple desks supplied with the company’s insignia stationary, envelopes and fountain pens. Back then, people frequently wrote letters at the drop of a hat. Speaking of hats, grown-ups used to wear them. This came along with dressing suitably for the street. Women’s hat styles were fickle but men’s were serious. A man’s hat was his second on the field of life; it represented him. The manner in which it was worn or held bespoke who he was. It paid his respects when he tipped it or removed it in the presence of women. There’s an argument to be made that Western civilization began its decline when men, by and large, stopped wearing them. The time came when department stores ceased to stock merchandise once considered basic. It was adapt or perish. Frederick & Nelson went down broke but proud. The last I heard Marshall-Fields, its parent company, was bought up by Macy’s which was a nice enough store back when but nowadays they just sell stuff – like Walmart but without the brawls and dead bodies. When the grand old department stores finally passed away, an idea died with them…the idea of a finer life.

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A Night at the Opera House

by M.L. Klein

So. There I was. It a was balmy Spring evening in 1911 and I was attending the premiere performance of Le Spectre de la Rose at the Monte Carlo Opera, guest of a dignitary of the House of Grimaldi who simply would not leave me or my milky white shoulders alone.
I was wearing this very same evening gown by Worth with it’s rose petal drapes whose design Donna Karan, exhausted of any l’idee nouvelle, recently saw fit to plagiarize and had patched together by the hirelings of her atelier.
Where was I?
Oh, yes.
My escort and I made our entrance to be seated ever so slightly late. It was not so late that the house lights had entirely dimmed, yet late enough that the orchestra was tuning instruments in that hauntingly discordant way – seemingly just to enhance the special grace of my appearance.
It was then gasps of admiration arose from the auditorium.
It was I, and not Vaslav Nijinsky, who was the very Spectre de la Rose.
Later in the foyer, during the mercy called intermission, my so-called gentleman friend with the overly familiar hands offered me an innocent compliment which I took as an offense to serve him right. This licensed me to splash the contents of my champagne glass into his face and to turn away with an injured expression. The young Baron de Rothschild, who quite knew when to take a lady’s arm, dashed to my side and swifted me away from the sputtering cad but not before challenging him to a duel at the roulette table later on. A gasp arose, yet again, from the surrounding crowd. As far as anyone was concerned this pansy ballet could not end soon enough and everyone gathered at the casino directly after to witness my champion wreck financial ruin upon my odious offender.
Unfortunately, once at game, both young Rothschild and the Grimaldi chap suffered massive hemorrhaging of their bank accounts and far beyond… savings, investments, properties, polo ponies and would have bled themselves entirely to death had I not stamped my dainty foot and insisted this madness stop. It’s the sort of distasteful scene that puts a lady reaching for her scented cigarettos and I tapped one upon its sterling case, the one without a lighter.
A score of lights blazed forth in my direction. I leaned towards the one connected to the most dashing man, as far as I could tell, in the smoke-wreathed room. I exhaled a throaty “Merci”. He pressed me to keep his gold Rand Bar lighter but I was not in the habit of accepting gifts from strangers so I tossed the thing onto the gaming table just to show him what I thought of trinkets. I flicked my cigaretto ash hither to punctuate my meaning. When the roulette stopped spinning, that single flippant play of mine broke the bank of Monte Carlo! The crowd gasped. Then, they coughed in frightful spasms. My cigaretto ash had set fire to the silken carpeting which any charwoman would know better than to install where smoldering tobacco leaves are enjoyed. Crowded room or not, someone really ought yell “Fire!” when yelling “Fire!” is due, so that I did. The only thing perfectly clear in the panic that followed was that the grand casino would soon be so much charcoal & kindling. I alone kept my head & calmly gathered my chips and, having second thoughts, the gold Rand Bar lighter. I’m sentimental. Except for a waiter that needed stepping over, I made a graceful exit to safety from the conflagration without so much as a singe on my starched tulle petticoats. I can’t say the same for the other ladies’ gowns but no great loss if anyone cared to ask my opinion. Best no one did for I was very much preoccupied tallying the incalculable sum I had just won. Oh, lucky me. It’s not that I needed much more means, what with the trusts from Daddy’s choo-choo train empire and Mumsey’s allowance. So, it’s no boast I would have restored the gallant baron’s lost fortunes but I was only newly acquainted with the man and he was hardly my business.
Pity about the casino.
Later on, succumbing to more sentiment, I bought up Rothchild’s estate gone to debtor’s auction and left him the vineyards just to be nice.
Back at the Hotel de Paris, I had a refreshing night’s rest for my next demanding evening when I attended Swan Lake in a breathtaking white feathered frock. But, that’s another story.