Tag: snakes

Snakes and Ladders, and Roach

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After the Getty that first evening, we took the dollar-a-ride Blue Bus the two miles down to Santa Monica beachfront from our high-priced basic motel room (with its rooftop terrace, complete with astro turf, bogus ferns and a couple of Greek statues). We were rewarded with dancing and singing street acts along Third Street Promenade, as well as the boardwalk in front of the pier. The loin-clothed guy below got the prize for the sheer novelty of his act. As you can see he’s on a ladder, his black skin gleaming with sweat from the effort it took to balance while gripping two writhing snakes.

Okay, the snakes were fake, but there was a certain irony in his expression, along with a couple of comments he made that allowed him to pull it off.  A short walk away, was Border Grill, the place I’d been dying to try where we had reservations; it was a bust for the most part. Except for the fact that it was a hole in the wall–which to me, is essential for a Mexican restaurant–with a wild bold fiesta décor, a long saloon-type bar, and the mango margaritas and the Jicama Orange Salad were fabulous. And then there was that little extra, a tip from the bartender that just across the street lay Harvelle’s, a quintessential blues, jazz, and soul club, in operation since 1931.

Later that night, we squeezed into Harvelle’s dark narrow barroom and found a seat up front against the wall, just in time to see the performers take the stage—the Blues Brothers incarnate, plus Roach, the female singer. They started playing and it took everything not to get up and dance, but then we would’ve lost our seats. The highlight of the night for us was this one smokin’ number from Roach. I think I managed to capture her acting it out in this iPhone shot: “If you ever see me at three o’clock in the morning on Montana Boulevard, you know, a black woman with blond hair, pull over and help me or get the hell out of my way.” Note: Montana Boulevard is in a rich white neighborhood.

It was hard leaving the show but we had a bus to catch before they stopped running and tomorrow was another day of fun, fun, fun. And an almost disaster.


The Magic Faraway Tree

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An unpublished Enid Blyton book has just been discovered: Mr. Tumpy and His Caravan. It’s about an anthropomorphic caravan that befriends a dog, develops wanderlust and goes off on an adventure involving a dragon. Lovely stuff. Who’s Enid Blyton you might ask? A prolific British author who died in 1968. And still selling.

As a kid, I devoured everything I could find of hers in our dinky library in the copper mining town of Nkana, Zambia. This was a room half the size of the “Men-Only” bar on the other end of the T-shaped Mine Club, social center of the mining community. As you can imagine my choice was limited, but with holiday trips down to South Africa to visit the relatives, I managed to get my hands on enough of her books to satisfy my addiction.

I loved Ms. Blyton’s The Famous Five and The Adventurous Four series: kids embarking on adventures and solving mysteries. But my favorite was the Magic Faraway Tree in the Enchanted Wood where the trees, “a darker green than usual,” whisper their secrets: “Wish-wisha-wisha.” This wonderful tree, laden with fruit of all kinds from acorns to lemons was inhabited by colorful characters like Moon-Face, Mister Watzisname, Silky, and the Saucepan Man, draped with all kinds of saucepans. Its topmost branches led to ever-changing magical lands above the swirling clouds. All this took place in the lovely English countryside, so regular and so civilized.

We had our own version of The Adventurous Four, only our adventures took place in the jungle which wasn’t so civilized, all kinds of snakes, notably, the deadly black mamba, and crocodiles, along with lions that lived in the bush at the bottom of town. The “foofie” slide we built across the croc-infested Kafue River featured in our adventures. This was a purloined mine cable strung between two trees across the river, a homemade metal cylinder the size of a toilet paper roll providing the ride down the cable. Wearing your cozzie (bathing suit), you climbed the tree on one side of the river, wrapped your hands around the roll, leapt into the void and zoomed fifty yards across the swiftly running water to land on the other side. Hopefully you made it. Fun. Belly button tingling, pants pissing fun. I don’t remember anyone not making it.

But the thing is I also wanted Enid Blyton’s world, filled with high teas, hedgerows, badgers, Peter Rabbit, Winnie the Pooh and fairies, where magic was part of its history. A Magic Faraway Tree could only exist in the lush verdant English countryside; a black mamba would make short work of all those fairy folk in their buttercup dresses and foxglove caps. I’m grateful to Ms. Blyton for instilling in me the love of ceremony and magic. It showed up in my first book, Monkey’s Wedding, featuring English fairies along with the African equivalent, tokoloshi. I can’t wait to buy Mr. Tumpy and His Caravan, so I can read some of the passages over the phone to my two grown sons (one in South Africa, the other up north in Davis, California) and see if they connect to the characters from the days I read the old Enid Blyton books to them.