GoodHeart

My last name means GoodHeart in German and I've spent 52 years trying to live up to that. It's hard, there are days when I can be the biggest jerk on the planet but I do try. I don't know much about my dad's side of the family and I don't know the origins of the name, but I've always assumed there was a scholar or Rabbi somewhere in there who actually earned the name.

Though I don't know the origins of the name I do know that my dad and his parents lived up to the name. My dad is really one of the gentlest and truly kind people I know. As a kid you always see your grandparents through deeply rose colored glasses but there is very little negative I can remember about Benny and Selma either of . My dad is and his parent's were truly goodhearts!

As a kid we spent a lot of time with them. My grandfather worked the race track circuit as a paramutual agent(the guy who takes your bet). That meant during the summer Poppa Benny would spend time in Stockton for the State fair and Santa Rosa for the Santa Rosa county fair. My brother and I  would usually spend a week or two with them. We'd usually all stay in the same room them in one double bed and me and my brother in the other; my sister is 7 years younger and I'm pretty sure my grandfather retired by the time she would have been old enough to stay with us.

We'd lay in bed at night in the dark and she'd tell us all kinds of stories about their travels(which was odd because the only travelling they did when I was a kid was to these fairs). She talked about Los Angaleez(that's how she pronounced it)  and meeting Clark Gable at a hamburger joint and about the geyser in California where she was certain the owner would turn it on from a faucet when the crowd got big enough. If she was mad at us she'd threaten to give us fifty lashes with a wet noodle. I guess that was a phrase that was popular when she was younger, but she had a bathrobe that had a long, ropey tie on it that she sort of tap us with if were bad. She always giggled when she did do it.

Their favorite place for breakfast was a chain called Sambos They actually had the story of Little Black Sambo painted in a mural on the wall. By the early 70's someone figured out that this was deeply racist and changed the name to Sharis. In any case, once we liked something they always made us order the same thing. I don't think it was a bossy thing, I think they just got great joy out of  watching us enjoy things. So I always had to get a Monte Christo and my brother always had to get Chocolate Chip Pancakes. Thank god I never mentioned how much I like beef liver; imagine eating that at every meal.

In Santa Rosa there was a german place called The Black Forest. On birthdays they would play a Hurdy Gurdy machine with Happy Birthday on it. Even though my Grandfather's birthday was in October Selma would  always tell them it was my grandpas birthday. They'd come out with the Hurdy Gurdy and then the waitress would kiss him on top of his bald head and leave a huge lipstick mark. He always acted surprised.

My favorite memory was the summer of 69; the moon landing. They would always invite their friends to the hotel we stayed at in Santa Rosa, The Flamingo. They'd spend a couple of epic days with the women having Mah Jhong Tournaments and the men drinking beer and playing Canasta. They'd get a bunch of rooms together and put some card tables on the lawn in front. For the moon landing they dragged a TV(one of those giant consoles) onto the lawn and we all watched along with Walter Cronkite as Neil Armstrong landed on the moon. Everyone cheered and, while I didn't understand why they all were teary eyed back then, I get tears in my eyes whenever I watch clips of the moon landing now.

There were some bad days too. I remember my mom coming up and screaming at my brother in a drunken rage about something and Selma whispering (terrible, terrible) under here breath. There was the time Selma forbid me to ever read Mad Magazine again because she misunderstood a cartoon that satirized the hypocrisy and racism of the time with an American Flag using every hateful racial word possible written in the stripes. But mostly those were times I remember in a shimmery light.

(more next time)