Note: This article was contributed by our friend, Keith Seaman. A couple years back, I gave my dear friends Wendy and Ralph a gift for Christmas, a book about Southern California pop culture by someone named Charles Phoenix. It had tons of cool pictures of Long Beach, Los Angeles, Anaheim, etc. in the 40’s, 50’s and 60’s. I thought it was a nice enough gift, until Wendy called me, saying, “How could you give me this book?!?” She had been stunned by the part about a chimp being forced to dig its own grave (a long, absolutely horrific, yet humorously true story) and I realized I had given a gift that was far cooler than I had initially thought. So, when Wendy suggested that my wife Tara and I join her to see a slide presentation hosted by Phoenix, we were enthusiastically interested. On Sunday, April 3rd, Tara and I picked up Wendy and off we went to the wilds of scenic Glendora to see “God Bless Americana.”
The show was on the campus of Citrus College in the Haugh (pronounced hoe) Auditorium, a dazzling piece of swooping 1970’s architecture that Phoenix would later accurately describe as “space age.”
Upon arriving, we noticed the crowd milling about the theater waiting to go in and were struck by how, um, how shall I put this delicately, how incredibly old they all were. If there was a person there under the age of 60 besides Wendy, Tara and myself, we did not see them. That’s right! The Seaman/Flick families are always on the cutting edge of what’s hip in the senior community!
We found our seats amongst the sea of blue hairs and high pants and the show started. Mr. Phoenix came out and appeared to be the love child of Liberace and Will Rogers, a folksy fellow in a shockingly tight turquoise cowboy outfit.
I don’t think we could have asked for a more charming narrator for the slides that followed. And what slides they were! Stunning Kodachrome documents of 50’s and 60’s banality. Jazzy monorails from Disneyland and the L. A. county fair. Long forgotten discount stores like White Front (which wasn’t white, btw). Denizens of the 50’s crammed into dinettes enjoying meatloaf sandwiches and artichokes.
All of these amateur shots were accompanied by Phoenix’s sonorous and ironic commentary. He spoke of the ‘optimistic hemlines’ of young girls and ’56 Mercurys in ‘pumpkin and cream.’ Phoenix was definitely hipper than his aged audience who enjoyed the pictures but were confused (or perhaps scared) by his dishy commentary. As for us, we couldn’t stop laughing. We all decided that a Phoenix slide show was something not to be missed. Visit his website and find out when the next show is and maybe you can be treated to the sight of Helen DeGroat in a see-through negligee in front of a lime green shower curtain.
Following the show, we decided to have dinner. But where would be appropriate? Our choice, Clearman’s Inn in Pico Rivera, was perfect. Clearman’s is a steak house that opened in 1949 and it does not appear to have changed a whit since. The interior was dark, the bar had a fire pit, there were elegant paintings of nudes on the wall, it was the ideal accompaniment to the slides we had just seen. As our steaks were flambéed by a waiter in a red coat, we sat back and relaxed as a fun day of nostalgia came to a satisfying end.
Thanks, Wendy, for suggesting this fun outing. I’m sorry I inadvertently exposed you to the mental image of a chimp innocently digging its own grave, but I guess it was worth it in the end.