Charlie and I met at a party. Next day we get together for a date, we walk a precinct. Actually it was this precinct, it was for Larry Kapiloff. I recall talking to voters on this very street, I liked it even then, its a wide, concrete street with lots of palms, kind of reminds me of how LA looks in old movies. Of course in the '70's you never knew what would happen when someone answered the door. Billows of smoke at some places, a door opens to reveal a tabletop covered with white powder, a drunken lady (at 10 in the morning) answers another. That was the '70's. Its still a really nice street. This house was not on the list for that precinct walk, but I was friends with a lad who was the boyfriend of the guy who owned the house. A few years later they had us over for a visit. Its a great house. In passing I said "If you ever want to put the house on the market let us know". A few months later, the only time I ever ran into the lad on one of my morning walks he tells me the house is going on the market that very day, so I tell Charlie, he makes an offer, its accepted, and we moved in in 1983, on my birthday. 30 years. Charlie almost made it the 30 years, 29 actually. I can't even count how many parties and fundraisers for Democratic candidates we've had here, and they always worked out great. The house is an original, its got great views, great decks, its got a vibe somehow. Parties, gatherings, take a few minutes to click in and then they just roll, everybody has a good time. Of course, no gatherings since Charlie passed away. I think the parties are over.
Charlie had some interesting and fun stories. He told me that the day he started law school, at UCLA, he took a law book down to the beach at Santa Monica to study and a sea gull crapped on it, he looked at that as a commentary by nature on law. For a time he had a rental upstairs from an artificial limb retail store. For a time, if I remember correctly, he lived in a house on the street where the Sharon Tate murders had taken place. UCLA offered a quarter away program in the TTPI, Trust Territories of the Pacific Islands. In the interview the interviewer asked Charlie if he could stand being away from LA for 3 months. No problem! LA drove Charlie crazy. While working with the TTPI he wrote a lot of their fishing laws and a good portion of their Constitution. He and other workers lived in a concrete hurricane proof house with no windows, it was always at least 100 degrees inside, they shared it with a shrew. He toured a lot of the islands in the area. Sorry I forget the name of the island, maybe it was Truk, but it was famous because thousands of Japanese jumped from the cliffs to their deaths rather than to be captured by Americans. He told about the locals smoking refreshments the thickness of a finger then going boating, and not knowing that you needed to have gas in the tank for the motor to run. He told about one pair of guys whose boat got lost at sea for weeks, but it was found with only one guy in it, surprisingly ( ! ) well fed.
In college, Stanford, he spent a semester at the school's campus in German. He was an accomplished linguist, he got an 800 on the GRE in German. Whenever we'd go to Stanford reunions the group that had gone to the German campus always had their own mini-reunions and Charlie was well remembered, well loved. He was a genius. Seriously. He got into Stanford at age 16 on a full ride scholarship. Also a scholarship to UCLA Law School. Brilliant. But he never lorded it over anybody. In law he was not competitive, he helped people. That was his natural instinct. His love was basketball. He played in as many as four leagues a week, he played on the San Diego team in the gay games (can't call it the gay Olympics) in Sydney in 2002. Anyway back to Germany. One of his stories had it that as WW2 was ending Germans knew they were losing, knew they would be taken captive, and one particular family he met knew they would be taken either by the Russians or the Americans. Naturally they feared being taken by the Russians. They told him that when a Black soldier knocked on their door they fell on their floor in tears of joy because obviously the Black soldier had to be an American; their fate was secure. Those mini-reunions were always fun. It was amazing talking to perfectly middle class, ordinary looking people who had for example hitched steamers across the Mediterranean, who had hitched through Eastern Europe and through the Soviet Union. Charlie also had fun stories about he and his family traveling through East Germany to Berlin; there were so few cars on the road they knew if you'd been speeding because your progress was marked from checkpoint to checkpoint. And there were a LOT of checkpoints. Dad, Chuck, asked one too many times for papers at such a checkpoint responded "How do you think we got this far without papers??" I guess the guard didn't understand English well enough to understand. Charlie's photos of East Berlin were remarkable, remarkable there could ever be so much gray, relieved only by red Party banners for Walter Ulbrecht. He and other Americans visiting Berlin walked down to the Wall to see it from the Communist side and were held at gunpoint by guards until it was established that they were not East Germans trying to escape.
Stanford...what a beautiful school. What nice people. Charlie always loved Stanford, always cherished memories of his years there, always enjoyed visiting. And other Stanford grads I have met all felt the same way, a deep love of their university. The alumni association takes very good care of the alums, keeping them involved. One of the nice things is visiting alums can attend lectures by professors to catch up on work in their fields. You could select anything. We went to physics, geology, economics, art, and music presentations. Very interesting, and it does keep the alums involved. Although a U of Oregon grad myself I kind of consider myself part of that Stanford family, kind of a legacy from Charlie. I root for both the Ducks and the Cardinal. Oh. They used to be the "Indians" but that name became politically unacceptable. There was a poll to search for a new name. Charlie said quite a few people supported "Robber Barons". I loved his sense of humor! However the Stanfords made their money, they did a magnificent thing in creating that University, what a wonderful legacy not just to California, not just to all the people who have graduated from it, but to America and the world. The entire computer revolution, the entire electronics revolution, began because of basic research carried on at Stanford.
Charlie got a CO status during the Vietnam War, after graduating from Stanford. He worked at a lab researching neurology at UCSF. He lived in Oakland and commuted into work at UCSF on a hillside in the Haight. His vehicle was an old white panel van. Only view out the back was through a window, and from the sides, the mirrors. I had the misfortune to drive it, it seemed to have no clutch. I would plan routes that had no hills so it wouldn't roll back while waiting for the clutch to catch. But Charlie did fine with it on the famous hills of San Francisco. He enjoyed Bay Area life, he had several friends in the area. We would often drive up to Oakland to visit Steve and Pat. Oakland gets bad press. It was Queen Liliuokalani's favorite mainland city, it has some of the best weather in the Bay Area, some of it is scary but a lot of it is really nice. From the hills at sunset you can look across the bay and see the sun setting behind the Golden Gate Bridge, it leaves a trail of gold across the bay, perhaps explaining the name Golden Gate. And we always liked to walk across that bridge during our visits. Of course, always visiting the Castro. Charlie had The Look down quite well. A tight green tank top, tight Levis, construction boots; as he walked down Castro guys would come out of the bars to check him out.
More later.
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