Laying Claim To The Literary History of Ventura County
by
Vincent Rosamond Rice
Here is a writer for the LA Times declaring there is no Literary History in Ventura County. I beg to differ – because I know better! My Aunt Lillian told me she saw her father, Royal Rosamond, typing in the living room with Erle Stanley Gardener.
“My father taught him how to write!”
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1993-06-10-vl-1534-story.html
Did Lillian mean Royal taught Erle how to type? My aunt told me that her mother, Mary Magdalene Rosamond went to Ojai to visit her friends in the Theosophic Society. Did they have their library, yet? Then there is the Meher Baba retreat. I read God’s book ‘God Speaks’.
Christine Wandel and I talked for four hours last night. Peter and Christine went to see the thirteen year old guru. We read Yogananda’s book. She had a dog she named Dogananda. At Thirteenth Street our friend put books on the India religion by my bed. I wanted to go to India. I was twenty. Last night Chrisine and I made a plan to have – I-Ching Thursday. I am going to video us consulting the Hexagrams like we did at Thirteenth. She never doubted making love to Ruben Blades. This morning she told me her stories of living in Rome. She put marijuana seeds in her suitcase in California and planted them on her terrace in the suburbs of Rome. The pot leaves were put in a spaghetti – and folks got real high and drove around Rome in a Austin. I can’t type fast enough. My cup runneth over.
Last night I looked for houses for sale in Camarillo where I want to live so I can help establish some Literary History. When I saw this hacienda, I saw the set for my story ‘Lima Bean’. This would be the new home for Ruben Blades & Family. With four new members – he’s going to need a bigger boat! But, I don’t need Mr. Blades. I can invent a Famous Salsa Singer of The Village named – Cisco Pete!
I now got to sell my ass. I’m going to push ‘Lima Bean’ to some studios who can snatch up this house for three million – and start shooting a series!
Lima Bean
Cisco builds a tiny house for Christine by the pool. She has the champion of Latino Culture – throwing the I-Ching and going to the Krotona retreat where they end up meditating with the Duke and Duchess of Sussex. They invited the ex-royals over for a plate of Vegetarian Spaghetti with special seasoning. Last night I was looking at the genealogy of Conrad Ferdianand Wieneke, one of the first farmers in the Ojai Valley.
The worst book ever written was about my famous sister, Christine Rosamond Benton. It was penned by Tom Snyder who lived in Ventura. Snyder tried to get me to sign a non-disclosure, saying this would prevent hack-writers from stealing my family story. Tom – was the thief!
There are more words generated in Santa Barbara about the citizens, Harry and Meghan, who are not secret followers of Meher Baba, they becoming ‘Baba Lovers’ through their buddy, Peter Townshend, who played with The Loading Zone at the Fillmore. Meghan did not say she was bigger than Jesus. They did swim in the pool with Christine, and made friends with her two pet mountain lions.
I am looking into the suggestion Clint Eastwood had a plane crash off the shore of Camarillo. If true, he may have been saved by the Lewis Boys, who taught Clint how to ride and shoot. Spooky Noodles alo suggested I get Eastwood to direct ‘Lima Bean’. How about a back to the 60’s concert in Camarillo? We’ll call it…….BEANSTOCK!
Below are pics of my grandmother with Black Mask authors camping on St. Croix Island. That’s Norbert Davis – with gun! Royal Rosamond took these photographs.
VRR
Old Highway Route 399
Posted on November 10, 2015 by Royal Rosamond Press
Conrad Wieneke, the brother of my grandmother, lived on Highway 399 in Ojai. His sister, Eutrophia Maude Brown, lived on a farm nearby. Mary Magdalene Rosamond lived in one of Conrad’s homes in Ventura. The third photo from the top could have been taken on 399.
What is key, my kindred are modeling. My two aunts are posing with their mother sitting on the runner of a vintage car, and Eutrophia is posing in the bottom photo. These people did not know they are kin to Elizabeth Rosemond Taylor. My later sister, Christine Rosamond Benton, became a famous artist and married into the artistic Benton family. Jessie Benton, the wife of John Fremont, held a salon at Black Point in San Francisco. My first girlfriend, Marilyn Reed, did some modeling when she was thirteen, and fit right in with all the beautiful Rosamond Women.
That is Conrad Wieneke on the Ventura Beach with his three children, and June, Bonnie, Lillian, and Rosemary Rosamond. U.S. Route 399 went from Ventura to Bakersfield. This highway was changed to Route 33.
Norbert Davis: Profile of a Pulp Writer – Black Mask (blackmaskmagazine.com)
WITTGENSTEIN & NORBERT DAVIS (mysteryfile.com)
Norbert Davis – The Thrilling Detective Web Site
A Novel Guide to Ventura County’s Role in Literature – Los Angeles Times (latimes.com)
1060 Corte Barroso, Camarillo, CA 93010 | MLS #V1-9094 | Zillow
And by the way, culture vultures, now’s the time to reserve your seats for Donizetti’s tragic Ventura County opera, “Lucia di Lammermoorpark”
All right. So maybe we made all that up. So maybe Ventura County hasn’t exactly been a fount of inspiration for authors.
Maybe Philip Marlowe found prettier dames and tougher customers in L.A. than in, say, Camarillo. And maybe Santa Barbara gets a lot more attention from big-name authors than Santa Paula. Hey, it’s tough competing with a city that had its own TV soap opera.
“I guess we’re just a dim bulb between the bright lights of Santa Barbara and Los Angeles,” sighed one Ventura bookseller, reflecting the popular opinion about the county as a literary wasteland.
Ventura County’s most famous fictional appearance is little more than a cameo appearance in some other place’s novel. It is the scene in John Steinbeck’s “Cannery Row” where Doc orders a beer milkshake at a roadside stand in Ventura.
Meher Baba Wants Marin Ashram
Posted on February 26, 2021 by Royal Rosamond Press
Happy Birthday!
In posting on the giant oaks of Belmont in Janke Park, I got a clear idea from Meher Baba that he wants the Buck Foundation to found an ashram to the great teachers from India who came to California. They are, Baba, Krishnamurti, and Yogananda. This would honrr te religion of Kamala Harris the first Vice President born in California.
John Presco
Meher Baba & Giovanni Francis of Assisi
Posted on December 14, 2017 by Royal Rosamond Press
To discover Saint Francis was name John (Giovanni) by he mother, who I now consider to have been a Nazarite Mother after Hannah, Elizabeth, and Samson’s in-named mother, I might own proof there is a God. I am not offering a sublime rapture of spiritual feelings, nor do I seek any followers. My hand has been forced. God has taken everything from me in His Election. Job and Jonah and I have much in common.
My grandmother, Mary Magdalene Rosamond, visited the Ojai Center and made friends with members of the Theosophical Society that suggested Khrishnamurti was the Second Christ. I suspect Mary looked at me as a candidate.
The felling of Baba’s oak nearby, tells me there is a great spiritual wind and fire that is electing God’s People in a way I will describe to you. Consider Elijah being taken up in a Chariot of Fire.
Giovanni ‘The Nazarite’https://www.youtube.com/embed/uUSg9KZMiak?version=3&rel=1&showsearch=0&showinfo=1&iv_load_policy=1&fs=1&hl=en&autohide=2&wmode=transparenthttps://www.youtube.com/embed/TgyPRoWIa5c?version=3&rel=1&showsearch=0&showinfo=1&iv_load_policy=1&fs=1&hl=en&autohide=2&wmode=transparent
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jiddu_Krishnamurti
Meher Baba and Saint Francis
Posted on February 10, 2014by Royal Rosamond Press
“Saint Francis of Assisi was the only one of the very few saints in Europe to become a Perfect Master.”
Just before Jesus died, he said; “I am thirsty.” The first thing I said when I came back to life, after seeing the Lord, was; “I’m thirsty.”
Consider Mary Dominica Wieneke and the Order of Saint Francis. In searching for the Blue Angel that appeared to my sisters while they slept, and Kay Coakley, I look to my aunt, June Rice, who took care of me while I had the hooping cough. I almost died several times. I was eleven. I had turned blue and my fingers were contorted when I came into the living room where my aunt Lillian and uncle Dick were sitting. Lillian screamed, and Dick started hitting me on my back.
“Norbert Davis is a natural. If we were to pick anyone who, in spite of all human trials and tribulations, looks upon life resignedly and mostly as all fun, our nominee would be Bert.”
— Joseph T. Shaw, in an unpublished intro to The Hard-Boiled Omnibus
Chandler cited one of his early stories as an inspiration for his own writing. Philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein was a huge fan. And John D. MacDonald, in an affectionate salute to the man, called him “a writer who almost made it.”
Certainly, NORBERT DAVIS was one of the great tragic figures among the pulp writers of the thirties and forties. He wrote westerns, war stories, romance and adventure tales as well as well as crime and detective fiction. Yet, he never quite got the recognition he deserved while he was alive (and even now, he’s at most a cult favourite, more read about than read), mostly because he abandoned his ace in the hole, a humourously hard-boiled crime hybrid he had perfected in the pulps, for a chance to write for the more lucrative market of the slicks. And it certainly didn’t help that he committed suicide at the age of forty.
Not a good career move, that.
Still, he left his mark. In the thirties and early forties there were several mystery writers who worked the same vein of zany hard-boiled, screwball stories, including Craig Rice, Dwight V. Babcock (who was a pal of Davis’) and Frank Gruber, but none could touch Davis at his peak.
He regularly sold to the very best of the detective magazines of the day, including Dime Detective and even occasionally Black Mask, and regularly appeared in such top titles as Argosy and The Saturday Evening Post.
Nor was he a hack — sure, he cranked out some turds, as did most of pulp crowd, but at his best, he was one of the most entertaining writers around, endlessly inventive, able to imbue even the most hard-boiled tales with a sense of whimsy, witty dialogue; glib, sardonic wisecracks, fast-paced action, chaotic plot twists and outrageous characters — a deft combo of tough guy action and screwball comedy that still stands up.
The guy was funny without rubbing your face in it. If Chandler’s Philip Marlowe was Don Quixote, the last Boy Scout, out to save the world, Davis’ detectives were Sancho, willing to do what it takes, and hoping for a good meal and a soft bed at the end of the day, more than willing to cut a few corners to get there.
And then, just when you thought he was just another funny man, he’d gently lay a patina of clear-eyed prose over everything, sharp, dead-on prose that bordered on poetry.
* * * * *
Norbert was born in Morrison, Illinois, but moved with his family to California, where he studied law at Stanford. Times were tough, though, and Davis had to take on various jobs to pay for his way through school, but, as he later wrote:
“It became obvious that, if I were going to continue what I reverently referred to as my educational career, there would have to be some changes made. I tried mowing lawns and polishing cars and shoveling sand, and I decided that a life of honest toil was not for me. So I started murdering people… with a typewriter, on paper. “
Obsessed with cracking the then burgeoning pulp market, Davis began sending out his fiction, and soon managed to sell a few stories to Black Mask. Encouraged, he continued writing for the pulps as he ploughed his way through law school. By the time he graduated, he was making such a good living from his writing that he never bothered taking the bar exam.
Instead, the tall, lanky writer moved to Los Angeles and befriended many of the other pulp writers in area. In fact, he even made the famous January 11, 1936 photo of The First West Coast Black Mask Get-Together. That’s Davis seated on the right, offering up up a big cheese-eating grin while a gloomy Dashiell Hammett lurks behind him, possibly concerned that the bar will shut before he can get back to it.
Davis and some of the others eventually formed a West Coast writers group called The Fictioneers, which met regularly at a watering hole on Western Avenue, and when Davis moved to Santa Monica, Raymond Chandler was a neighbour, living a few doors down.
In fact, Chandler was an early fan of Davis’ work, citing “Red Goose” (February 1934, Black Mask) in particular as an inspiration for his own fiction, and later recommending “Kansas City Flash,” another early story by Davis, for inclusion in James Sandoe’s Murder: Plain And Fanciful anthology from 1948. Chandler considered that story particularly “noteworthy and characteristic of the most vigorous days” of Black Mask.
But mixing funny with felony has always been a hard sell, particularly for those aiming to crack Black Mask, then the toughest market of them all. Of the several hundred short stories Davis wrote, only a dozen or so ever made it into the legendary pulp mag. Black Mask‘s editor at the time, Josph T. Shaw, was not a huge fan of humour, although he begrudgingly included the afore-mentioned “Red Goose” in The Hard-Boiled Omnibus and admitted (in an unpublished intro to the story) that “There is one thing that makes Bert Davis an individualist; he always did and always will write just what he very well pleases: mostly what strikes him as ‘funny’.”
Yet Davis persevered, and made a good living selling to other pulps, including Double Detective, Detective Fiction Weekly and most notably, Mask’s rival, Dime Detective, where he flourished.
The legacy Davis left behind of delightfully eccentric (and often morally elastic) pulp detectives is well worth hunting down: the shady screwball private eye Max Latin (my personal favourite), the wise-cracking bail-bondsman with the patched up eyeglasses Bail Bond Dodd, the chronically fatigued trust company investigator Just Plain Jones (he of the sore feet), and a host of others live on in old pulps and the occasional reprinted story.
But it wasn’t enough for Davis. By the forties Davis, like many of his friends, was itching to escape the pulp jungle, and try his hand at more lucrative markets. His first stab at a novel, The Mouse in the Mountain, introduced Doan and Carstairs, an oddball coupling of a short chubby P.I. and his snooty Great Dane and was published in 1943. A sequel, Sally’s in the Alley, soon followed.
Sales, unfortunately, didn’t exactly set the world on fire, and the third in the series, Oh, Murderer Mine, was published only in paperback. A fourth novel, Murder Picks the Jury, a standalone co-written with Black Mask pal W. T. Ballard and published under the pen name of Harrison Hunt, didn’t sell particularly well either.
Which must have stung. He’d been married briefly as a young man, but somewhere in the forties he’d remarried, to Nancy Kirkwood Crane, a sculptor and a writer herself, who’d had some success selling articles and romance stories to the slicks. Perhaps adding to the tension, Nancy was the daughter of Frances Crane, also a writer, and an even more successful one, having written the popular Pat and Jean Abbott mystery series.
So, perhaps encouraged by his wife Nancy’s success there, Davis cast his eyes on the greener pastures of the slicks. For a while he enjoyed modest success selling stories (mostly non-mystery romances) to The Saturday Evening Post. But as the decade progressed, that market too began to dry up for Davis. In 1948, he wrote to Raymond Chandler, complaining that fourteen of his last fifteen stories had been rejected for publication, and Chandler eventually did send him a couple of hundred bucks in 1949.
That same year, at Nancy’s urging (she was originally from the East), or perhaps to be closer to the New York markets, they moved to Connecticut.
Unfortunately, by July 1949 he was dead. That same July, Davis drove to Cape Cod. Rumours abound about the cause of his suicide, many attributing it to his discovery that he had cancer or the recent stillborn death of his and his wife Nancy’s son, and others to a severe case of writer’s block, the death of his literary agent or simply poor sales (in the last year of his life, he only sold two stories). But whatever the reason, on the morning in July 28, Davis took a garden hose, hooked it up to his car’s exhaust and ran it into the bathroom of the house where he was staying. He died from carbon monoxide poisoning. He was 40 years old. He was cremated in Boston and his ashes were sent to Los Angeles.
Norbert Davis remains in a strange place in the ranks of the creators of P.I. fiction, caught in the no-man’s-land between the fact that only small bits and pieces of his output are available (he only wrote five novels, and until recently, only a handful of his short stories have ever been reprinted) and the fact that he has been, in the words of Pulp Mystery Adventure, “praised to the skies by critics of pulp magazines.” Certainly, anyone who has been fortunate enough to stumble across his work has come away more than satisfied.
If you’re lucky enough to come across a story by Davis somewhere, read it. And spread the word.
Rosemary’s Scholarship
Posted on November 12, 2015 by Royal Rosamond Press
This morning I talked with Sean at Channel Islands State University, about donating the letters, photographs, and books pertaining to my grandfather, Royal Rosamond. He was extremely interested, and is going to have the President call me back today. I sent her the home movie of my mother made by a member of the Lewis family who once owned the land this hospital is built on. I also said I would donate three of Rosamond’s lithographs. We talked about me teaching a course at this place of higher learning where Rosemary Rosamond told her four children she had a scholarship to. On one of her outings with the Lewis brothers, they stopped in at the newly build asylum, and after talking to the head doctor, he suggest Rosemary check in for treatment. I think they needed a Star Patient, a local who would give the message to Camarillo Pioneers, that being insane, and treated in a spanking new hospital, is like eating a peach cobbler pie. My mother turned down her scholarship – and flew away! She rode like the wind!
Alas I own the Alpha and Omega of my autobiography ‘Capturing Beauty’. I see myself lecturing young people on the importance of discovering our roots, for, who knows what treasures lie there. The Santa Cruz cottages were especially built for students, and look like they are out of Tolkien. There is a Utopian look to them. Here is Pacifica, our Atlantis, rising. Alas, my family will get the respect we deserve!
“All’s well, that ends well!”
Jon Presco
President: Royal Rosamond Press
http://www.studiochannelislands.org/education/award-for-excellence-in-art-studies/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_State_University,_Channel_Islands
The campus is located about two miles (3 km) south of the city of Camarillo, at the base of Long Grade Canyon.[15] The school is set on rich agricultural land at the edge of the Oxnard Plain and nestled into the base of the Santa Monica Mountains. The flat site is bordered by farms and marked by a lone peak called Round Mountain.[16] The state hospital was built in a remote area so roads were improved to provide for the campus traffic.[17] The university developed a bus transit network to serve the campus with VISTA buses providing access to Gold Coast Transit in Oxnard and the Camarillo train station. Gaining official possession of the land in 1998 and then occupancy in 1999, California State University began classes on the 634-acre (257 ha) existing campus-style facility, primarily one to two-story buildings organized around three primary quads. In 2007, the campus acquired an additional 153 acres (62 ha). Many of the buildings are in the Mission Revival and Spanish Colonial Revival architectural styles, although there are a few “modern” buildings. The campus is split into two primary sections: North Quad and South Quad. In 2012, del Norte and Madera Halls were opened in the North Quad; some of the buildings in the North Quad are still uninhabited and unsafe due to age.
There are two villages that make up student housing. They are both named after two of the Channel Islands: Santa Cruz and Anacapa Islands.
Opened in the Fall of 2007, Santa Cruz village is home to freshmen students and those students that have less than thirty units completed. Most suites are two bedroom, housing six students with three in each bedroom. Most single occupancy rooms are reserved for the Resident Assistants or “RAs,” which are students employed by Housing and Residential Education. Santa Cruz has various amenities including a game room, a fitness room, a dance studio, television rooms, and study rooms. Santa Cruz village at capacity is home to 460 residents. Anacapa Village houses transfer students and sophomore level students. Each dorm has a small kitchen and living area, two bathrooms, and four bedrooms housing six roommates in a two-double, two-single format.
The Scary Dairy is an old dairy farm adjacent to the former Camarillo State Mental Hospital, now California State University, Channel Islands.[1] It was run and maintained by the staff and patients of the hospital as a form of work experience and additional income for the hospital. In the 1960s the dairy was closed and the buildings fell into disarray and have since been heavily vandalized.
The land is now a part of the California State University, Channel Islands. The public is welcome to explore by foot during the day. University police officers patrol the area frequently and are on the lookout for large groups of youth, vandals and firearms of any kind (including paintball guns) and any other suspicious activity.[2] The field adjacent to the dairy has been used for sheriff exercises and training. The trails around the dairy are used by hikers, runners and photographers.
In 1932, the State of California purchased 1,760 acres of the Lewis Ranch and built the Camarillo State Mental Hospital, which operated from 1936 to 1997 and at one point treated as many as 7,000 patients in the mid 1950s.
Located on the parcel was a dairy farm that produced crops and housed livestock that fed the hospital community. The farm was disbanded in the 1960s and has been left in a state of disrepair, falling prey over the decades to vandals and coined “Scary Dairy.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Reilly_(artist)
http://livingnewdeal.org/projects/california-state-university-channel-islands-old-camarillo-state-hospital-camarillo-ca/
http://www.paulturang.com/index.php#mi=2&pt=1&pi=10000&s=7&p=7&a=0&at=0
California State University Channel Islands (CSUCI, CSU Channel Islands, known informally as CI) is a four-year public comprehensive university located outside Camarillo, California in Ventura County. CI opened in 2002, as the 23rd campus in the California State University system, succeeding the Ventura County branch campus of CSU Northridge. The campus had formerly been the Camarillo State Mental Hospital. It has been and continues to be the setting for numerous television, film, and music video productions. CI is located midway between Santa Barbara and Los Angeles in Camarillo, at the intersection of the Oxnard Plain and northern most edge of the Santa Monica Mountain range. The Channel Islands are nearby where the university operates a scientific research station on Santa Rosa Island.[6][7]
Channel Islands offers 53 types of Bachelor’s degrees, 3 different Master’s degrees, and 6 teaching credentials.[8][9] It does not confer Doctoral degrees. In the Fall of 2012, the university enrolled the largest amount of students in its 10-year history with 4,920 students including undergraduate and postgraduate. Since its establishment, the university has awarded nearly 7,000 degrees.[10] In Fall of 2013, the university had 349 faculty, of which 93 (or 27 percent) were on the tenure track.[
The Eastwoods of Oakland
Posted on June 3, 2012 by Royal Rosamond Press
In the biography of Clint Eastwood by Patrick McGilligan ‘Clint, The Life and Legend’ I read this on page 30.
“Glenview, near Ardley Avenue, Crocker Highlands (named for the banking Crockers, who donated the site) and Frank Havens School (named for one of the Piedmont city fathers – three of the grammar schools the boy attended – were within a close radius of Piedmont. Haven was already a local institution, and one day, at Crocker Highlands, the tousel-haired boy sat for a class photograph with schoolmates that included Jackie Jensen, the future outfielder for the Boston Red Sox.*
The American Leagues most valuable player in 1958”
My grandmother, Melba Wilkins, raised the Jensen brothers after their parents were divorced, and their mother had a nervous breakdown and was hospitalized. Jackie and Bobby Jensen went to Oakland High with my father, Vic Presco, who was present when his daughter presented her portrait of the actor, Jimmy Stewart, in Carmel. Mayor Clint Eastwood was present. Vic wore a white suit and tried to upstage Jimmy who he looked like when young. Bobby taught art at McCheznie Junior High where all four Presco children attended. We also went to Glenview Elementary – and so did Clint when his family moved to Ardley Avenue where my good friend, Burl Aldridge lived. Clint also lived on Woodhaven Way that is down the street from where the Harkins family lived, on Pinehaven. Were these two streets named after Frank Havens?
My friend, Sparky, lived on Pinehaven as did Bruce Perlowin, the King of Pot, who has a movie coming out. Sparky got his name after a crazy women in the Piedmont Loundge (in Oakland) frisked him for a piece, she mistaking him for a real bad dude named Sparky. My friend was asked to contribute to the movie ‘The Doors’ he a good friend of Jim Morrison, but refused, saying Stone would not do Jim justice. The bar scene in Sudden Impact was very authentic.
What amused me about this biography was the attempt to get a very famous movie star out of Oakland all together, and permanently place him in Piedmont, which was once ranked in the top 10 wealthiest places to live in America. I had stumbled on this book after telling the Librarian I might come upon something while looking for books on boat building. I am thinking of building a Shanty Boat and living in Alaska – as a total recluse. After reading about 32 pages, I showed the librarian my find, and told her some of my family history.
My mother wanted to get Vic into movies. But, he hated all those “phonies” as he put it. Vic looked like the guy on the Oakland Raiders emblem and wore a black patch after crazy Dee-Dee knocked his eye out with a five pound ashtray! Did he eyeball Clint with his good eye, or his bad? Vic smuggled his last wife over the Mexican border in a marijuana shipment, and was in with the Mexican Mafia.
“Duck Vic. Incoming!” Says Vic’s old war buddy on Iwo Jima.
Yep! If it were not for real bad guys in the world, like my Pops, Clint would be out ofa job -and his offspring out of a reality show Did I tell you my Godfather, Sergeant Skip Sutter, also went to highscool with Jackie Jensen, the Golden Boy. Skip led fifty Oakland cops against the Hell’s Angels at their Oakland clubhouse – and ended up in the hospitca for two weeks. It was a showdown – with gloved fists.
“Right turn, Clyde!”
When I read the Eastwoods were a long line of Cartman who delivered the vegetables they grew in the city, all of a sudden, I was not mad at my daughter anymore. I was furious because she and her boyfriend got in the way of the most creative project of my life, which was to turn our family story into a HBO series, or, a Soap Opera, for the reason we are the no man lands for the cultural Warfare that wages in our nation. With the mention of Jackie Jensen we now had a real foothold in history, and, I own some credibility, for there are just a handful of folks who lived in Oakland that became famous, because being real has its own rewards, an idea that is going out of fashion. Jack London took full advantage ofhard Oakland Reality – like Clint.
Clint Eastwood, and Christine Rosamond Benton – along with Jackie Jensen – are at the top of the list. Then there is my friend, Paul Drake, one of the most famous movie villains of all time, because he played Mick in Eastwood’s movie, ‘Sudden Impact’. Just as McGilligan employed my Oakland history in his biography, I could employ Clint’s in Rosamond’s biography, because Vic was the president of Acme Produce, my father working out of an old Victoria warehouse in Jack Lond Square. I wondered if Clint was a Lumper as a teenager. Did his Cartman kindred put him to work as a teenager loading and hauling produce like my brother and I.
I suddenly had empathy for Vic, and wished I could write only nice things about him, because he tried. Not everyone can be famous and successful. I thought about redoing my autobiography, taking all the kinks out of it, and present it as smooth sailing Waltonish fairytale that would put everyone in a good light. But, poo-pooh happened, and will aways happen to us all as you will read in regards to a $100,000 dollar handbag.
An hour ago, while surfing channels, I saw on the Entertainment channel ‘Mrs. Eastwood and Company’. I was floored as I watched a famous photographer fighting with his Muse, who is Clint’s daughter from a previous marriage, named Francesca, a name that appears on page 30. I am then watching the maid push a giant turtle around in the Eastwood home in Pebble Beach where the Benton’s lived, and their daughters, Jessica, Shannon, and Drew. There is talk about fifteen year old Morgan getting pregnant if her mother, Dina Eastwood, allows her to throw a a crazy drinking party. Consider the famous fashion photographer, Stephen Silverstein who did of a study of Marilyn in Malibu, and Rena, my Muse. Before my eyes Rosamond Women were everywhere!
Then, in the door walks The Man of the House, the Tan Man with a Rolex watch that I suggested Heather’s aunt wanted her to marry – and that I long claimed was the kind of Dad my daughter always wanted – and prayed for – before she ever lay eyes on me!
No! I am a real Oakland Boy who has not copped out and gone to Hollywierd. And all my friends were bad-ass Okland lads, that Clint claims he was, he learning to call folks “assholes” because he grew up in Oakland – and went to Oakland Tech about a quarter mile of my apartment on Broadway, where Heather was conceived, and where she lived with Randall Delpiano her fake father, who is another famous dude from Oakland.
Stay tuned, folks! It’s time to see how the other half live, those scallywags and hillbillies that Mr. Tough guy left in his wake! It’stime to go – Back to Oakland – where I lived with the Loading Zone from wence The Tower of Power came. The Eastwood pal around with a boy band from Australia, that look like ___ ____and would get their ass kicked if they walked in downtown Oakland looking like that! This is a fake band like the Monkeys whom my friend, Bryan McClean of ‘Love’ auditioned for. Bryan dated Lisa Minelli in Junior High.
You are only as good as your badist bad guy! That’s a pic of Paul waving a piece. Paul was Heather’s neighbor and played Roach in the T.V. series ‘Fresno’ that spoofed Dynasty and Dallas. Are these Pebble Beach folks – for real? Pebble Beach is a sissy name! The bad guy turns out to be one of the stars because he destroyed a $100,000 dollar handbag – and now offers to donate to charity because fans complained! Get real! This is no Reality Show! Time for a Reality Transfusion. Time to get back to your Oakland roots and let the world behold the – real you! Com’on Clint. Let it all hang out!
How about forming a charity in the hoods of Oakland that help little old ladies that have had their cheap handbags snatched?
“Here you go, Mam. A gift cirtificate for Wal-Mart, care of the Eastwoods – and you know who!”
“To hell with that! I want a new Glock! They got my gun. I want my gun back. Make my day! There’s some bad mother f———s on my street! ”
Hmmmm! Welfare Gun Queen For a Day! Now we’re talking. Lights! Cameras! Action!
This handbag should have never been made. It screams “Let them eat cake.” It is the Eastwood Trojan Horse that was let in, and out pour all those socialists who took hold in blue collar Oakland
Who needs Dirty (old) Harry when you got old ‘Bait Broads’ roaming the street, packing some serious heat – and delivering the most famous movie line – of all time!
Time to spread the wealth! Clint has been hogging the show for too long!
Jon Presco
Copyright 2012
Photographer Tyler Shields is trying to make amends for burning an expensive handbag on the E! reality series, Mrs. Eastwood & Company.
On Monday’s episode, Shields and his girlfriend, Francesca Eastwood (daughter of legendary actor/director Clint Eastwood), burned a $100,000 Birkin bag after putting a chainsaw to it.
The act led to fans calling the couple narcissistic and horrible for destroying something so expensive when the money it cost could have been used to help people in need.
However, Shields accepted the blame for the incident and is now making up for it by donating $100,000 to a needy family.
http://insidetv.ew.com/2012/04/08/eastwood-trailer/
There are three “nicer” grammar schools in the area around the Eastwood home in Piedmont, California, and a young Clint Eastwood managed to attend them all.
There was Glenview {just down the street from home}, the Frank Stevens School (named for a Piedmont city father), and “Crocker Highlands” (named for the Crocker banking family, who donated the site for the school).
[Pictured Left]
Note: Clint in the front row (3rd from right),
“Too Cool” to hold the banner.
Another interesting note is the boy on the left (squeezed out of the front row and refusing to join that female 2nd row) is young Jackie Jensen, future Boston Red Sox slugger, and 1958 American League MVP.
After completing grammar school, Clint followed in both his parent’s footsteps, and went to Piedmont Jr. High. Three years later (Jan. 1945), he graduated to Piedmont Sr. High School, located right next door to the Jr. High.
Things got a little rougher for Clint by the end of his first year at Piedmont High (Jan. 1946).
Eastwood was born on May 31, 1930, in San Francisco to Clinton Eastwood, Sr. (1906–70), a steelworker and migrant worker, and Margaret Ruth (née Runner; 1909–2006), a factory worker.
After his father died in 1970, Eastwood’s mother remarried to John Belden Wood (1913–2004) in 1972, and they remained married until his death 32 years later. Eastwood is of English, Irish, Scottish, and Dutch ancestry and was raised in a middle class home with his younger sister, Jean (born 1934).
Eastwood was born in San Francisco to Clinton Eastwood, Sr. (1906–70), a steelworker and migrant worker, and Margaret Ruth (née Runner; 1909–2006), a factory worker.[3] He was nicknamed “Samson” by the hospital nurses as he weighed 11 pounds 6 ounces (5.2 kg) at birth.[4][5][6] After his father died in 1970, Eastwood’s mother remarried to John Belden Wood (1913–2004) in 1972, and they remained married until his death 32 years later.[7] Eastwood is of English, Irish, Scottish, and Dutch ancestry[3][8] and was raised in a middle class home with his younger sister, Jean (born 1934).[9][10] His family relocated often as his father worked at different jobs along the West Coast, including at a pulp mill.[11][12] The family settled in Piedmont, California, where Eastwood attended Piedmont Junior High School and Piedmont Senior High School, taking part in sports such as basketball, football, gymnastics, and competitive swimming.[13] He later transferred to Oakland Technical High School where the drama teachers encouraged him to enroll in school plays, but he was not interested. As his family moved to different areas he held a series of jobs including lifeguard, paper carrier, grocery clerk, forest firefighter, and golf caddy.[14]
In 1950, Eastwood began a one-year stint as a lifeguard for the United States Army during the Korean War[15] and was posted to Fort Ord in California.[16] While on leave in 1951 Eastwood was a passenger onboard a Douglas AD bomber that ran out of fuel and crashed into the ocean near Point Reyes.[17][18] After escaping from the sinking aircraft he and the pilot swam 3 miles (5 km) to safety.[19]
Eastwood directed and starred in the fourth Dirty Harry film, Sudden Impact, which was shot in the spring and summer of 1983 and is considered the darkest and most violent of the series.[149] By this time Eastwood received 60 percent of all profits from films he starred in and directed, with the rest going to the studio.[150] Sudden Impact was the last film which he starred in with Locke. She plays a woman raped, along with her sister, by a ruthless gang at a fairground and seeks revenge for her sister’s now vegetative state by systematically murdering her rapists. The line “Go ahead, make my day” (uttered by Eastwood during an early scene in a coffee shop) is often cited as one of cinema’s immortal lines.
Things got a little rougher for Clint by the end of his first year at Piedmont High School (Jan. 1946). Junior’s Dad, Clinton Sr., had picked up an old “beater” for his son to fix up and drive. Although too young to drive at 15, the lanky freshman was fast approaching his 6 ft. 4 in. height, a head taller than his classmates. Thanks to his height, the police never noticed that he was too young to be behind the wheel. Once he had the “old rattletrap” running, there was no reason to wait until he was legal. The first in his crowd to drive didn’t hurt in his high school social standing. He had always drawn attention from the females, but now he had a car… Awash with testosterone, he now found interests other than academics. Auto shop was now more important than Algebra, and his academic indifference began to show. By the end of the first year, his joyriding with the boys and time spent in the backseat of his car with the girls ( he lost his virginity at 14 & saw no reason to stop), resulted in a major drop in his grades. It was, as Clint confessed in an interview, “Cars, girls, and beer”. Sporting a “ducktail” and leather jacket, he personified the new “Jimmy Dean” – “Elvis Presley” rebel. Hanging out at “Coffee Dan’s”, Omar’s Pizza, and sittin’ in on blues piano at Hambone Kelly’s in El Cerrito, now took priority over homework. Summer school didn’t do the trick and, as Clint’s Mom discreetly confessed, “He was asked not to come back to Piedmont High”. Oakland Tech would now have a new student.
Jensen was born in San Francisco, California. His parents divorced when he was five, and he was raised by his mother, who frequently moved the family. After serving in the Navy toward the end of World War II, he became an All-American in two sports at the University of California. As a baseball pitcher and outfielder, he helped California to win the inaugural College World Series in 1947. He pitched Cal to victory in the regional final by outdueling Bobby Layne of Texas, and in the championship Cal defeated a Yale team featuring future President George Bush. As a football halfback, Jensen was a consensus All-American as a junior in 1948, becoming the first Cal player to rush for 1,000 yards. In the season-ending 7-6 victory over Stanford he ran for 170 yards, kicked a punt for 67 yards, and had a 32-yard run late in the game in a 4th-and-31 situation. Cal ended the regular season at 10-0 under coach Pappy Waldorf, winning a share of its first Pacific Coast Conference title in ten years, and Jensen placed fourth in the Heisman Trophy voting, with Doak Walker taking the award. In the 1949 Rose Bowl, Jensen scored a touchdown in the first quarter to tie the game 7-7, but 4th-ranked Cal was upset 20-14 by 7th-ranked Northwestern.
In 1949 Jensen, who batted and threw right-handed, left college after his junior year and signed with the Oakland Oaks in the Pacific Coast League. His contract – along with Billy Martin’s – was sold to the New York Yankees in 1950 with the intention of him being a backup for Joe DiMaggio. But he played in only 108 games for the Yankees over three years, primarily in left field. He appeared as a pinch runner for Bobby Brown in the eighth inning of Game 3 of the 1950 World Series against the Philadelphia Phillies, but was in the game only briefly before Johnny Mize popped up to end the inning. Jensen did not stay in the game defensively, and the Yankees completed a sweep of the Phillies in Game 4; he did not appear in the 1951 Series against the New York Giants.
Following the arrival of Mickey Mantle with the Yankees, in May 1952 Jensen was sent to the Washington Senators in a six-player deal, and he made his first All-Star team. He finished the season with a .286 batting average and 80 RBI, leading the league with 17 assists and placing third in the AL with 18 steals, a total he duplicated in 1953. He was traded to the Red Sox in December 1953, and led the AL with 22 steals in 1954, also finishing third in RBI (117) and fourth in home runs (25).
Acting Credits
1990
Midnight Cabaret
Intruder
1987
Poker Alice
Baker
1987
The Highwayman
Deputy Bricker
1986
Fresno
Roach
1986
Crime Story
Lawyer
1985
Blackout
John Davey
1984
Beverly Hills Cop
Strip Club Holdup Man #1
1984
Crackers
Man
1984
Hunter
Lambert
1983
Sudden Impact
Mick
Gun
Character
Film
Note
Date
Colt Detective Special
Mick
Sudden Impact
1983
Browning Hi-Power
Mick
Sudden Impact
1983
Smith & Wesson 3000 Shotgun
Mick
Sudden Impact
1983
Ithaca 37
Strip club robber
Beverly Hills Cop
1984
Retrieved from “http://www.imfdb.org/wiki/Paul_Drake”
Photographer Tyler Shields is trying to make amends for burning an expensive handbag on the E! reality series, Mrs. Eastwood & Company.
On Monday’s episode, Shields and his girlfriend, Francesca Eastwood (daughter of legendary actor/director Clint Eastwood), burned a $100,000 Birkin bag after putting a chainsaw to it.
The act led to fans calling the couple narcissistic and horrible for destroying something so expensive when the money it cost could have been used to help people in need.
However, Shields accepted the blame for the incident and is now making up for it by donating $100,000 to a needy family.
“The Birkin photos are for sale. If somebody were to buy…all right, let’s do this. If somebody wants to buy one of the Birkin photos, I will donate $100,000 — not to a charity — but to a family. I will give one family in need $100,000 cash,” he said Tuesday. “I would select somebody who…my father had a stroke when I was 15, and it became very difficult financially for the family, so I think I would do that. I think I would find a family that someone had a stroke or some type of ailment. I think that if somebody had done that for us when that happened to me, it would have been like a miracle. So, I’ll find somebody who that just happened to and I will help them out.”
Shields is known for his provocative photos of stars such as Lindsay Lohan and Mischa Barton.
Mrs. Eastwood & Company stars Clint’s wife, Dina, and focuses on her relationship with her daughters, Francesca and Morgan.
Oakland Jonny Got Sober
Posted on September 26, 2011 by Royal Rosamond Press
It is alleged one does not quit drinking until you hit bottom. Growing up in Oakland, bottom can be a long and dangerous trip, down.
In 1987 I fouud myself living in a converted water tower in back of a very old Victorian house on 47th. and Shattuck in Oakland. I had lived here six years prior after a teacher at City Cottage bought the place for next to nothing. I was susposed to be the manager, help this Yuppie keep all the riff-raff at bay, but, he rented another back appartment to two young girls who the local gang were pimping out. In otherwords, I was managing a whorehouse for dangerous young dealers – whom I knew since they were twelve. I had befreinded all of them, and they liked me, remembered me fondly!
One day I emerge from Fort Appache to see a burned out car across the street, I asked my young buddy, the fearless leader, what happened.
“We had a drive by. They torched our car and shot at us!”
Shaking my head, I said;
“You guys are really blowing it.”
“Don’t worry. We’ll protect you.Your part of the hood.”
That was the first time I heard the expression “the hood”. And, right on cue, a few days later, my crazy friend Lester comes to the hood for a visit. We had lived at the University Hotel, and done some serious damage.
“What in the hell are you doing dressed like that?” I asked Lester the Molester.
“What do you mean?” he replied while opening my refrigierator.
“You’re dressed just like a Narco Agent. It’s like you jumped out of your squad car, ran into a telephone booth, and emrerged like this! Look at you. You even got hard shoes on. You’re going to get me killed!”
“Hey, you’re out of beer! What gives? There’s a liquor store down the street. Let’s go!”
I protested, but Lester is extremely compulsive.
Now, walking down the street, this monkey in a Hawaian shirt is turning heads, getting the funniest looks from everyone we meet. Now my buds are staring hard at me. I could read their minds.
“What gives, Oakland Johnny? Why are you bringing the heat down on us? We tusted you. You’re part of the hood.”
Twice in my life someone has pointed a gun to the back of my head, and pulled the trigger, several times, but each time the gun had jammed. Alas, I had found the sure way to put an end to my miserable existance.
On the corner of 47th. And Shattuck was a liquor store where my gang hangs. About six of gthem were there at the entrance when Lester and I walked in. There were no hardy hellos or high fives. There was a cold silence.
Lester and I were into Cobra malt beer, because it was twice the alcohol content. We bought two tall six packs. Coming out of the store, Lester, asks,
“Who wants a beer?”
There was grumbling amongst the gang. There were no takers. Lester thrusts a tall one at a beautiful young girl, who hesitates, then goes for it, because…..
“Today’s my birthday! I’ll take one.”
Her boyfriend, reluctantly takes one after looking at his bros, and opens it.
“That’s not the way to open a Cobra beer!” Lester shouts. And taking one out of the bag, he bites down hard on it, then holds it out as the beer comes squirtung out of the two punture wounds he made with his canine teeth.
“That’s how you open a Cobra beer!” And Lester is sucking the beer out of the can like a Vampire as the gang cracks up. Now, we all want one, and there are big smiles to be shared, and cool talk, because Lester broke the ice, And we weren’t going to die that day, because, we had not reached bottom yet. Instead, we sang Happy Birthday in front of the store that is now Pyung chang’s Tofu House.
My bottom came a week later, while I was in the yard, raking up the needles used to inject drugs into these – children. I was going to plant a vegetable garden right in the middle of Fort Appache as a means to turn the tide of negativty. As I spaded over the hard earth, I had a vision of how my life was going to end. No, I would not get killed, However, on way my home from the bar at 2:00 A.M. someone is going to creep up behind me and hit me with a blunt insturment, and take what’s left of my money. I will suffer iriversible brain damage and become a stumble bum, the very dude I have seen in the Proudce Markety when young. I will be the Fool in the Hood, who can not speak anymore, nor, even think. But, my gang will take care of me until the day they die, which would not be too long into the furture.
I started calling old friends from high in my ivory tower. I called Michael Dundon, and gave him a good cursing out, because he too had betrayed me, left me for dead. He quielty listened, waited till I was finished, then said;
“Do you want to get sober?”
“Yes!”
“Then get on a train, come up to Eugene Oregon, and get in the New Hope program.”
“New Hope?”
The rest is history! Thanks the Blue River Dundons, I entered an out program at Serenity Lane, and got sober. The first thing I wanted to do as a Sober Man was build a raft and sail it around Round Lake. Doing this was a world away from hauling sacks of spuds for Captain Victim, who did not believe in playing with his sons.
The child plays
The toy boat sails across the pond
The work has just begun
Oh child
Look what you have done
Jon Presco
Copyright 2011
Rosamond Press 
Reblogged this on Rosamond Press and commented:
Property in Montecito is soaring. There is a strange undeveloped property up for sale.