Today, I’d like to tell you one of those ’small world stories’..
.. the kind that, when you get to the end of it, everyone says, “Gosh, what a small world!” It’s one of my personal stories that come to mind whenever someone tells their own ’small world story’, about running into a long-lost cousin in a Toledo deli while on a business trip, or their old high school gym coach, who’s now a drag-queen in West Hollywood.
This particular story starts back in the eighties. Actually, the entire thing takes place in the eighties but the first part is a bit earlier in the decade – 1984. I’d finished up a 4 year Navy hitch in San Diego a few years earlier and stuck around, living at various addresses with various roommates, including ‘Andy The Greek’. He wasn’t actually from Greece but his parents were, so he was a first generation Greek/American who spoke fluent Greek to his Mama during the weekly telephone calls home to Boston. His parents lived in the Greek section of town, where papa owned a Greek restaurant and had taught Andy how to cook. During my stay with him, I was introduced to Spanakopita, Baklava, Lemon Chicken and other savory salivation-making Greek specialties that Andy whipped up every weekend.
San Diego.. I miss it almost as much as Andy’s cooking
We rented a duplex from Mrs. Green, a Japanese widow who’d been married to an American WW2 veteran, thus the generic American name. Andy and I each had our own room in the right side of the place, while Mrs. Green puttered about in the left side, all by herself.. a lonely, chatty widow who looked out for us ‘boys’. It wasn’t uncommon to answer a knock at the door and find her standing there with a big smile and some kind of Japanese treats she’d made. In turn, Andy would share some of his Greek delicacies with her – it was all very international.
One time she told us of her late husband. Mr. Green had been a Navy flier who was held by the Japanese as a POW until the war was over. It was never clear whether this was for months or years, but the interesting part about it is that’s where they’d met – she was there as a nurse who looked after the well-being of the prisoners. After the war, he’d been released and returned to the states for a few years, but decided he couldn’t live without her, so he went and found her. They married and he returned home with her, settling in San Diego because he’d originally been stationed there. How’s THAT for a romantic story, ladies?
Okay, so back to Andy The Greek..
One day he bought a jacked up monster Toyota truck with a chrome roll-bar and four wheel drive because he wanted to go four-wheeling somewhere, but he never did. He just drove this huge truck around the streets and freeways of San Diego for the next year, guzzling hundreds of gallons of gas, which was okay because gas was about a dollar a gallon then and we all weren’t so ‘green’ as we are now. I don’t think anyone gave Andy a hard time for environmental reasons, but they did give him a hard time for driving a butt-ugly truck. He was still proud of it though, for Lord only knows what reason, and asked me to take a picture of him standing beside it one day while it was parked out in front of the duplex. I did, and I kept a copy after giving him one, and as much as I’d love to post it here I’m afraid I can’t because it was lost long ago.
I still had it in 1987 though.
It was in a photo album, and I was showing that album to Cindy, a petite brunette whom I’d dated a bit after moving to Sacramento. I lived up there for a year, having taken a job at a local radio station, and Cindy came over on one of my days off to hang out. I’d rented a room from Paul and Pearl, a fabulous couple in their fifties who stayed on as friends of mine for many years after I’d left their house, but I’m afraid Cindy wasn’t a keeper. She was fun to look at, but not so deep – think Mila Kunis‘ character of “Jackie” from “That 70’s Show” and you’ve nailed her. By the way, I never did. But we did flip through that photo album that day while Paul looked on, and Cindy was particularly interested in my photos from San Diego because she’d lived there for a few years. When we got to the one of Andy The Greek standing in front of the duplex next to his monster truck, her eyes got wider than they normally were, which was REALLY wide, and she said, “OH MY GOD!”
She placed her hand over her chest and said it again, but with TWO exclamation points.. “OH MY GOD!!”
Paul and I looked at each other with the same puzzled expression that you have right now.
“What?” I asked, “That’s my old roommate Andy.. did you know him or something?” I was thinking, “My word, this chick’s dated everyone.. do I really want a piece of that?”
But it wasn’t about Andy, or the truck.. it was the duplex..
She’d lived in it.
“I lived in that HOUSE!” she said, which was not entirely accurate because it was a DUPLEX and not a house; I told you she was kind of dumb.
“Oh, Really?” I wasn’t sure I believed her.. she’d proven to be a bit of a drama queen before, and she loved getting attention. The picture only showed Andy, the truck and most of the duplex, but it didn’t show the address, so this next part cinched it..
“YES! It’s on 41st street and there’s a donut shop up on the corner and across from that is a Unitarian church! I’m telling you, I lived there in nineteen seventy eight, with my boyfriend, and we sold drugs out of that house and this is just too fucking WEIRD, dude!”
Paul looked at me and grinned. “Dave, I think she’s got ya.. she lived there!”
She went on to tell us that the reason she and her boyfriend had to move out was that the place had been sold.. to a Japanese woman and her husband, who had plans to move into it and rent out the other side. Cindy and her boyfriend had lived in the MRS. GREEN side of it, and she accurately described the interior to me – it’d been built in the
fifties and was pretty distinct. She even remembered the day Mr. and Mrs. Green came in and looked around as potential buyers, because she had to tidy up and hide all the weed.
So, out of the thousands of homes, apartments and duplexes in the San Diego area, this girl I met in Sacramento, which is about 500 miles away, had lived in the same one I did.
But she did agree that Andy’s truck was butt-ugly.. turns out the girl had some class after all.
Mila Kunis/Cindy in Sacramento – so NOT butt ugly.
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A few years back I was booked as an extra on an HBO show called “Arli$$“, about a sports agent (or reporter, or something.. I’d never watched it.) We shot some scenes on a sound stage and then broke for lunch – another sound stage that wasn’t being used for the show had been set up as a cafeteria, and I grabbed a tray of food and took a seat at an empty table. I didn’t know anyone there, and didn’t really want to fraternize with the crew.
