Yesterday I picked up my mother at the airport in Burbank. I haven’t seen her in a couple of years. She came to attend the retirement party of an old family friend. Noble Threewitt. He retired after 75 years of training thoroughbred racehorses. Today was his birthday. He turned ninety-six. I’ll talk more about that later, when I find the cable to download some photos from my camera.
In the meantime, I have something else. After the swanky affair, we came back to my house. I couldn’t put Mom to bed because I hadn’t put the sheets in the dryer. Yikes. What are we going to do for forty minutes? I would have spent the time writing – I have a heavy deadline on my book and could use every available minute between now and July. But that would have been rude. So, I pulled out a binder of old photos I’d collected from my grandmother’s house (dad’s side) when she died and my dad’s house after he died. What could be more fun than sending my mother down memory lane?…the yellow brick road she travelled before she dumped my dad (when I was twelve) for a guy way way lower on the food chain.
One thing that amazes me about my mother is that she remembers people. People she hasn’t seen or thought of in years. I can’t remember anyone. I looked at my kindergarten picture and only remembered one girl’s full name. And maybe another three by a first or last name. I put all the important pictures in front of her – all the images of the good times she had with my dad. The wedding pic, the honeymoon shot, kids, postcards she’d sent to me from their world travels…and then this photo. Which was taken at least two years before I was even born.
It’s a small 3×5 snapshot. I could barely see the people. But my mother just rattled off a bunch of names. And told me it was a gathering in California while my parents were down for the horse races (they had horses that ran in California, but lived in Canada).
Here’s who she remembered off the top of her head, corresponding to the numbers on the photo:
1. Lionel Conacher (1900-1954) – selected by sportswriters in 1950 as Canada’s all-round male athlete of the half-century.
2. Max Bell (died in ‘72) – Google him. He lived across the street from us. He owned the newspaper in Calgary (as well as a boatload of other things) and hosted all the dignitaries that came to town, including Robert Kennedy and Bing Crosby.
3. Victoria Horne (1911-2003) – wife of #4 and an actress.
4. Jack Oakie (1903-1978) – actor with over 100 IMDB credits. It was his house. Notice the pics of his famous friends on the wall? I love his IMDB personl quote: “The pictures I made were called the bread and butter pictures of the studio. They cost nothing and made millions, and supported the prestige productions that cost millions and made nothing.” And this trivia note: Working as a Wall Street clerk, he narrowly escaped death in 1920 after the Treasury Building was bombed by terrorists. Guess things really don’t change.
5. Rosemary Ripley – friend of my parents.
6. Joyce – My mother.
7. Isabelle McMahon – part of the stinking rich McMahon family. The pro football stadium in Calgary is named after them.
8. #11’s wife.
9. Agnes Bell – wife of #2.
10. Cecil Chesher – my dad.
11. Johnny Longden’s brother – Johnny Longden was a famous jockey who won the Triple Crown in 1943 and is the only man in history to win the Kentucky Derby as a rider and a trainer.
My mother had a good time. Seeing people she knew in the old days, both in person and in my photo collection. We woke up this morning and I took her back to the airport and off she went. Less than a 24 hour visit. That’s the way it goes.
