It’s struck me that write a lot about Japanese Americans. That’s Callie (Yamaguchi) Elliston and me at the 1970 Arroyo Grande High School Prom.

This is why.

Callie’s mother, Louise, known as “Dragon Lady” for her fierce protection of the Lucia Mar Superintendent—she was the District secretary–was unfailingly kind to me. She introduced me to cheesecake, which I first encountered at nineteen. Hers was magical. She and the Yamaguchi sisters introduced me to sushi, long before it was fashionable. It, too, was magical.

Many years later, due to a gross administrative error, I was named the Lucia Mar Teacher of the Year. That was for Louise.

What I owe the Hirase family is likewise beyond imagining. It was Joe Loomis and Larry Hirase who took me in after my beloved mother took her own life in 1969, when I was seventeen. Cancer takes some lives, heart disease others, and depression takes many more. Joe and Larry did me the favor on not considering me weird because of the manner of my mother’s death.

When I visited the Hirases’ home, there was a big fifty-pound sack of sushi-grade rice just inside the front door and a jeroboam of sake on the kitchen counter, an exotic counterpart to my family’s potatoes and bourbon.

I had entered a new world in which I felt completely at home.

In my home, on Huasna Road, in the late 1960s, my parents—brilliant, passionate, loving, terrifying, hopeless and endlessly inspirational–were beginning to come apart. They were beautiful. They were the finest parents anyone could’ve hope for; they made me who I am. So did staggering flaws in generations of DNA, Anglo-Irish, forged in famine, in Pennsylvania oilfields, in Missouri cornfields and milo fields and tobacco fields plowed by big, beautiful, powerful horses.

All of these were carried down to my folks, and so to me, by generations of men and women marked by integrity and fearlessness. And by failure.

When my mother died, I felt ugly. With the Ellistons or the Hirases, I felt restored. Kaz Ikeda corrected the uppercut in my baseball swing. Keith Sanbonmatsu and I were chosen to greet the U.S. Congressman visiting AGHS. The Fuchiwaki sisters, as another generation had been–at least before 1942 arrived—and all of them, our dearest neighbors, were taken away from us—were instrumental to the feel that made AGHS feel like home, just as AGUHS had been in 1941.

When I became an AGHS teacher, I taught three Kobaras, one Nakano, two Ikedas, four Hayashis.

So this is why I write so much about Arroyo Grande Japanese Americans. They are home. In some way—my friend Dennis Donovan gets this—this wee Anglo-Irish American belongs to these people, too. I am home with them. I am safe.

Of course.

Aimee Mann. Love the song, love the hair, including that braid.

Still have to look up the lyrics. This is a mighty fine performance, from 2018, and it made me happy Nena can still bring it.

This song might seem slight. I would argue that it isn’t. Its popularity resurged after the Election of 2020. It was a nice thought. Patty Smyth? You BOUNCE, girl! You’ve still got it, too.

From 1985, Aretha. Pure joy. And Clarence Clemons on the sax.

Annie Lennox at the concert for Nelson Mandela, 1988. Wow.

The official music video. That bow. That hair. Dear Lord, that RANGE. Sigh!

Here performed twenty years after its 1982 release, the Pointer Sisters’ “I’m So Excited” is so electric. It’s pure joy.

Finally, and I actually will quit now, there is this group. The song was written by Prince. I have never recovered from my crush on the singer, Susannah Hoffs, who is 65 going on 66. Shoot, I’ve got TIES older than that.

I am now on Day Five of said rotten cold, so thank goodness it coincided with HBO re-running its Western Deadwood, with its elegant Shakespearean dialogue punctuated by frequent “f___s.” and “c_______ers” It’s the only Western I’ve ever seen that demands a libretto, so you can have the time after to deconstruct the dialogue, rich with philosophy and with honeyed insults that are almost inscrutable.


My favorite character, of course, is Ian McShane’s deceptively admirable barkeep, Al Swearengen. Al, a pimp, hustler, thief, murderer and moderate drinker—he’ll limit himself to three shots at a time before he takes a pause–is magnificent. He is, as the mythologist/philosopher Joseph Campbell said of Han Solo, “a hero who doesn’t know he’s a hero.” Yes, he disguises it well, “Irascible” is Swearengen’s best mood. The rest of him would make Machiavelli blush.

I was sick enough this time to notice that another actor, Garret Dillahunt, appears twice. Dillahunt was the hapless but adorable grandfather figure in a charming sitcom, Raising Hope, centered around the little girl that a working-class family is trying to raise up right. Dillahunt had all kinds of problems, including a certain intellectual density, but his failures (fruitless schemes, minor dishonesty, brain farts) were mitigated by his devotion to his family. He was wonderful.

In both the Deadwood roles I’ve seen so far, Dillahunt was a miserable human being. Early in the miniseries, he was the drunk Jack McCall (at left) badly in need of dental work, who shot Keith Carradine’s Wild Bill. Midway through the series, he reappears as a smooth and silky agent (at right) for the ruthless silver baron George Hearst, and his job is swindling miners out of their claims. His avocation—he is a psychopath–is murder; his victims are the prostitutes he kills with a straight razor. He is as much a bastard in this show as he was a sweetheart in Raising Hope. That’s fine acting.

As to the primary cast, there really was a parallel to Timothy Olyphant’s sheriff, Seth Bullock. His name was Seth Bullock, and in his time (1849-1919) he really was a sheriff, a U.S. Marshal and he really did operate a hardware store in Deadwood. There was, of course, a real Calamity Jane, a real Swearengen (crueler, had to believe, than McShane’s character), a real Sol Star (born in Bavaria), and so on.

McShane is my favorite, but alongside him I admire the prostitute Trixie and Brad Dourif’s town doctor.

Another detail that struck me today was the peculiarity of Olyphant/Seth Bullock’s walk. As soon as he leaves the hardware store or his home, he claps his felt hat atop his head and he elevates to his full height. His walk, then, is fluid but stiffly upright. He walks narrowly, too, down the street, as if to avoid passing bullets.

I’ve seen this walk before. I think Olyphant is paying tribute to Henry Fonda. Fonda had abnormally long legs, championed by John Ford in My Darling Clementine, Ford’s wildly extravagant version of the Wyatt Earp story. I’ve written about those legs before, but let me show you, rather than tell you.

You can see, albeit briefly, the same kind of walk as Bullock and Wild Bill confront a man who’s murdered a family—the only survivor is the little girl he missed— outside Deadwood.

I even decided to take the “Which Deadwood character are you? I came up as Whitney Ellsworth, a prospector and gentleman who comes to the aid of Alma, Seth Bullock’s onetime lover. He proposes marriage to her to legitimize her pregnancy, but she demurs, goes back to the dope and Ellsworth, one of the few townies with the courage to stand up to George Hearst, is shot dead by Hearst’s gunmen, probably Pinkertons. Yup. It fits.

I can get through one episode at a time of the Spielberg/Tom Hanks series Band of Brothers, which speaks more to me because my Dad was an Army officer in Europe. Sometimes I can’t get that far in The Pacific. It’s so harrowing that I don’t know how any Marine came home undamaged. I don’t imagine that any did.

I read, many years ago, With the Old Breed, by Eugene “Sledgehammer” Sledge, a character in the miniseries, and the historian/biographer William Manchester’s account of his war service, Goodbye Darkness, and both left me deeply troubled. That’s exactly the impact they should’ve had.

Somehow, thanks to the work of computer artists and the incredible composition, “Honor,” by Hans Zimmer, the opening credits to the miniseries are strangely and surpassingly beautiful.

But it remains a disconnect in my spirit, to imagine what young men from my hometown went through. There were other Marines, but here are five who resonate for me.

Drs. Howard Cookson, Howard Hayashi, Dykes Johnson, Charles Clark, Ed Paulding, Andrea Tackett, Scott Davis.

The SLO Trib series on how hard it is to get a primary care physician was both excellent and immensely sad.

My childhood physician, in Arroyo Grande, was Howard N Cookson, who practiced out of the beautiful office on Traffic Way that now belongs to Dr. Morgan.

Here is what Cookson did for us:

–Dug a BB out of my cheekbone.

–Dragged me by my skinny ankles from beneath his desk for my polio shot. (Yes, we believed in vaccinations in those days. The alternative, polio, terrified parents.)

–Came out to our house on Huasna Road to treat me for chickenpox with the proverbial black bag.

–My Mom miscarried when I was eight or nine Cookson was there within minutes and he stayed for a long time in my folks’ bedroom, talking softly to them. I could hear their voices but not the words.

–Oh, yes. Cookson founded Arroyo Grande Hospital in 1962.

Tragically, he died of cancer soon after.

Arroyo Grande has been blessed with good doctors, general practitioners like Cookson and Dr. Matousek, orthopedists like Ed Paulding, pediatricians like Charles Clark, a Civil War veteran (a cavalryman under Geroge Custer).

What Clark treated, other than the occasional adult with a stab wound incurred on a local farm, is heart-breaking:

–A teenaged apprentice tending the printer at the Arroyo Grande Herald who got his fingers caught in the press.

–A little boy, thrown from his horse, who suffered a skull fracture.

–Another little boy who lost fingers from a home-made firecracker.

–A little girl, her mother distracted for just a moment–something that all parents share–who fell into the fireplace in her flannel nightshirt.

I am not from Arroyo Grande. I was born in Taft and we moved here in 1955. But when I was born, I was premature and I was a “blue baby.” The umbilical cord was strangling me. Mom’s doctor, Dykes Johnson, was an amateur pilot at an air meet in Shafter.

He sensed, I guess from the nurse’s voice over the phone, that something had gone terribly wrong. He flew his plane back to Taft and saved my life.

And then there are doctors like Howard Hayashi, who once operated on me and who once called the wife of another patient whom he’d operated. She was frightened. Had something gone wrong?

“No, no!” Hayashi replied. “He is doing fine. I was calling to see how YOU are doing.”

I had an a-fib incident once in cardiologist’s offce, Dr. Andrea Tackett, whose soft Kentucky accent must’ve mirrored my grandfather’s. She held her appointments, plopped my sorry ass into a wheelchair, and accompanied me over the French Hospital’s ER, where she gave the attending doctor detailed explicit instructions on what she wanted done. Then she squeezed my hand, smiled at me, and went back to her practice.

Tackett became the first female Chief of Staff in French Hospital’s history. She also did the physicals for all the AGHS young women athletes.

My favorite primary care doctor, in nearly 70 years of seeing them, was Scott Davis. What Dykes Johnson had done at my birth Davis did in my 60s. Like me, Scott, who died suddenly of a massive heart attack few years ago, was an alcoholic. That made him absolutely unafraid to call me out  when I was lying to him.

What the Trib reported, and so well, should not be. We should not have to wait endlessly for the good and skillful people we need.

Neither should they be hamstrung by the immense power, and the greed, of insurance companies. There’s a wall between doctor and patient now, and it’s immense, and it was built by corporations like United Healtchare. The wall has led, more than once, to violence.

The murder of United Healthcare executive Brian Thompson, December 2024. Pennsylvania policeman Andrew Duarte was killed by a distraught husband, whose wife was dying in a local hospital.

We can do better. We need to do better.

The Pope, who chose his name from my favorite saint, is dying. But I love this photo, of the little girl reaching out to him instinctively, in part because something like this happened to me.

I was doing very minor clerical work for Hank Mott, a San Luis Obispo attorney, whose children Elizabeth and I taught at Mission Prep. Mott works pro bono—it’s an expression of his faith—to unite adoptees with their forever parents.

I was walking a group of parents and children from Hank’s office to the County Courthouse for the adoption ceremony. One of the children was Jamaican, and she looked very much like the little girl in the photo on the right.

She was beautiful beyond imagination.

Then she did what the little girl on the left did. She reached out to me, both arms. For reasons that elude me, she wanted me to carry her across the street to the courthouse. So I did, with her real parents walking just behind.

It was not easy for me to let her go. But, paradoxically, it was one of the most memorable moments of my life. Her Mom gathered her into her arms and then the three of them—the new family—walked through the courthouse doors that closed behind them. I never saw them again.

I once got lost in Paris, in the Latin Quarter, separated from the high school students I was supposed to be leading, and did not mind it at all. I was enchanted by everything around me. I was fully present, as the Mindfulness people say, in the moment.

I had the same sensation that day on Santa Rosa Street in San Luis Obispo, California. I was, somehow, both present and dazed by the little girl who’d been safe in my arms. The courthouse doors were still in morning shade. When I walked out onto the sunlit sidewalk, I was not the same man I’d been just an hour before.

Mr. Mott made that possible.

“Others:” 1942, 1948, 1951.

“Used Cars,” Bruce Springsteen, from the album Nebraska (1982)

My little sister’s in the front seat, with an ice cream cone
My ma’s in the backseat sittin’ all alone
As my pa steers her slow out of the lot
For a test drive down Michigan Avenue

Now my ma she fingers her wedding band
And watches the salesman stare at my old man’s hands
He’s tellin’ us all ’bout the break he’d give us
If he could but he just can’t
Well if I could I swear I know just what I’d do

Now mister the day the lottery I win
I ain’t ever gonna ride in no used car again

Now the neighbors come from near and far
As we pull up in our brand new used car
I wish he’d just hit the gas and let out a cry
And tell ’em all they can kiss our asses goodbye

Dad he sweats the same job from mornin’ to morn’
Me I walk home on the same dirty streets where I was born
Up the block I can hear my little sister
In the front seat blowin’ that horn
The sounds echo’in all down Michigan Avenue

Now mister the day my number comes in
I ain’t ever gonna ride in no used car again

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That wasn’t my brand-new used car experience, not at all. But Greg driving me down and then me coming home with Hideo Shohei Yamamoto Koufax Mazda turned into a thirteen-hour adventure. Now Hideo (after Hideo Nomo, the great Japanese Dodger pitcher from the 1990s) is parked on our street, all snug and maybe a little pooped. Got him up to 80 on several occasions. about fifteen mph slower than Nomo’s fastball. So here’s Hideo Mazda:

Hideo’s a 2011, so the car still has a CD Player. Luckily, we still have many vintage CD’s, so I can listen to Springsteen and Annie Lennox and Toad the Wet Sprocket all over again. I want Joe Ball or my nephew Ryan to look over the brakes, which seem a little soft. A couple of warning lights go on for no apparent reason. The rear window’s tinted, presumably so the CHP can’t see me smoking crack cocaine as I drive down the freeway with Hip an/or Hop music blasting from the CD player, and that needs to GO. At 73, I have a hard enough time seeing anything.

I discovered something about myself. My friend Greg and my wife Elizabeth grew up in El Lay, and they have no trouble driving—assertively—in traffic down there. I grew up in Arroyo Grande, where you politely stopped while Johnny and Manny Silva parked their Ford F-150 pickups in the middle of Huasna Road. As soon as they realized you were waiting, they pulled aside and just a politely waved you through. Then they waved at you some more. Then they pulled their pickups, cab-to-cab, back into the middle of the road, to resume their conversation.

In El Lay (a term I like), your road hazards are huge scraps of semi-truck tires, boards with sinister emergent tenpenny nails, shards of glass like strands of killer diamonds, all swept neatly into the shoulder alongside the Diamond Lane. Mostly. And there are the occasional wrecks (not any today), stalled cars (several) and roadside arrests (One. CHP had the guy’s hands interlaced behind his neck).

So the sights are nerve-wracking to an Arroyo Grande boy. I left my friend Greg at Arnie’s Restaurant in Lawndale (a 70s throwback, like the Arroyo Grande Sambo’s in my high school days. The food at Arnie’s was marvelous), fumbled my way back to the 405 North, and drove the next twenty-two miles with my shoulders roughly parallel to my ears. My nervousness had contracted my trapezius muscles so much that they were like cannonballs.

Here are a few impressions I gathered from today’s adventure:

1. I suffered an acute overdose of Teslas. A few of them were driven by people so short that you could barely see them. Maybe one of them was Elon’s son, Li’l X SpaceX Musk. Good news: I saw only one Cybertruck, the automobile industry’s version of the high school wedgie and perhaps the most heinous technological design since the Stuka dive bomber, which I think is what Elon was shooting for. Pun intended.

BTW: The new Toyota Camrys are far, far sexier. I saw a lot of them, too. They made me smile despite my envy.

2. So few miles, so much time, and Dante. It took me an hour and fifteen minutes to navigate twenty-two miles of the 405 North (hence the hunched shoulders.) Even then, I was not prepared for the 405/101 interchange. I felt like Sicilian immigrants to Ellis Island being poked and prodded by indifferent immigration policemen mispronouncing my name (“Vito Andolini”), and the Italian reference is a good one, because Dante Alighieri accurately captured the 405 and 101 in Inferno, when he described the innermost rings of Hell. Michelangelo did a darn fine job of depicting that interchange, as well. In another panel, The Lord informs the unlucky motorist, who for some reason has his nekkid buttocks exposed, that he’s taken the wrong exit.

3. There were happy moments. Off-ramps that have names like “Mulholland Drive” and “Sunset Boulevard” bring back many happy Sixties memories—I loved L.A. music (the Doors, Crosby Stills Nash & Young, Joni Mitchell, the Byrds, and—sorry, Dude—the Eagles). Until the music died, as it did in 1969 with the murders on Camino Cielo. Oops. Maybe I need to put Charles Manson in another paragraph.

By the way, speaking of “L.A. Music:”

Another happy moment: when people change lanes, shifting sideways into a space not much wider than a north-south coathanger, they wave their thanks to you, the car behind.

Okay. One lady did.

4. Other places were far less happy. The Coast Highway, along Malibu, is still closed except for residents. On the way down, Greg pointed a series of steep hillsides that rise above Camarillo. On one of them, we lost Kobe. We talked for a long time about the Lakers. Greg won a contest and got to ride on the team plane in the Magic years; one of the best birthday gifts I ever gave was to buy Thomas and a friend tickets to a Lakers game in the Lebron era. Chick Hearn, the play-by-play announcer, came up, too (“Couldn’t throw a pea in the ocean,” for cold streaks; “Yo-yoying up and down” for a player dribbling at the top of the key and looking for a pass). Remembering Chick softened losing Kobe. But not enough.

5. Still there—thank you, Lord: The Skirball Center, the Getty Museum, the poignant vastness of the tombstones at the L.A. Veterans’ Cemetery, the Sheraton Universal, and the stunningly tasteless billboards, like the sones for Sweet James’s law firm. So El Lay. And the churchtops: steepled Anglican or Catholic, Byzantine domes, Coptic or Orthodox, loud-speakered mosques, Baptist churches whose presence is advertised in Hangul, in Korean.

The fires are still there, too, alight in our memories. The Coast Highway, along Malibu, is still closed except for residents, because mud and rock flowed down the coast hillsides as ashen as Pompeii. I could not shake images like these from my mind as we entered L.A. from the 101.

But then, the historian in me remembered, hours later, that we Americans are made of strong stuff. The fires reminded me of Randy Newman’s sublime song “Louisiana 1927,” when another disaster met with the threat of presidential indifference.

But my adventure today reminded me of another Randy Newman song. This is a good way to end this little essay. (And I love the Buick.)

I love you, L.A.

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