House of David

Posted 1/15/10. Monday, January 4 was Take Your Sons to a Radio Station Day, a fictitious national holiday I made up to justify bringing Hank and Gabe with me to a radio interview at KPFA in Berkeley. Denny Smithson, the host, was as gracious to me on the air as he was to my sons off the air, letting them sit next to me in the studio during the interview. (Pictured is a KPFA producer in the control room.)

 This was actually the second radio interview on the Wheels of Change Tour in which I’ve brought my sons, the first being an NPR “California Report” gig I did in San Francisco in November. After that interview I treated the boys to lunch at Mel’s Diner on Van Ness and took them to see Baker Beach in the city. Baker Beach is just west of the Golden Gate Bridge with swell views of the bridge, the Marin Headlands, and the mighty Pacific. I had not been there in a long time and so, while the boys were chasing waves, flopping around in the sand and getting completely wet and filthy, I decided to take a quick walk to stretch my legs.

            I started walking toward the bridge past other children, families, and couples when I noticed something rather, well, unusual. Suddenly the only people on the beach were men. All without swimsuits, and all with their doppelgangers hanging free. Now, in my younger years, I did occasionally go to a naked beach, but the naked beaches I frequented all had women bathers on them as well as men. This was a strict requirement of mine. I immediately hit the brakes, and turned around.

            As I did two women, both fully clothed like myself, were coming down the beach behind me. “There seem to be a lot of guys in that direction,” I said. They said, “Yes, we know,” and made an abrupt right turn away from the water toward the parking lot. By the time I returned back down the beach to where the boys were, they were fighting and throwing sand at each other, and it was time to go home.

            Note to families and others: Baker Beach in San Francisco is a terrific spot, well worth a visit. But if you take a walk on the beach, you might want to head west, away from the bridge, rather than east. Fewer doppelgangers in that direction.

On another note, Mel Atwell of Walnut, California recently dropped me a line, mentioning as an aside that his wife Millie had turned 83 and he was 87. Mel is a retired Pasadena fire fighter whose brother Dick played for the House of David barnstorming baseball team. During the Depression (and even later) the Israelite House of David in Michigan sponsored several barnstorming teams, and Dick (standing, far left) was one of their top performers.

The bearded Davids (though there were no religious requirements to play on the team, you did have to have a beard) traveled across America in the 1930s astounding fans with their trick-catching and throwing routines, sort of a white baseball version of the Harlem Globetrotters. I wrote about Dick and Mel, who also played a little ball in his younger days, in The Golden Game, and am now lucky enough to count Mel and Millie among my friends. (Dick has passed on.)

Mel and Millie report they have five children, 18 grandchildren, and 13 great-grandchildren. Now that is truly an astounding trick.

 Speaking of people I’ve written about who are friends, Washington D.C. FBI Agent Adam Lee sent along pictures of the car he is working on with his son that he wrote about in my last blog. You may look at these pictures and merely see the front and rear end of a rebuilt Dodge Charger, but they're more than that; they're lifelong memories, being created by a father and his son. And when they're finished, those memories will be able to go pretty fast too.

Finally, on Tuesday, Jan. 19 at 6 p.m., I will be speaking about Wheels of Change and showing slides at the Mechanics Institute on 57 Post Street (between Market and Kearny) in San Francisco. Stop by and say hello; friends and family are free. I promise: Everyone will be wearing clothes.