It’s the Artist's Life for me!
By Culture Grrrl, Valer!e Monroe Shakespeare & Artist, Tery Fugate-Wilcox © This book is dedicated to
My Goddess, muse, wife, advisor, and constant companion
who created me as if I were her work of art
The true author of this tome and I.
Valer!e Monroe Shakespeare 1944-2011
A collection of anecdotes, (all true) we often tell at dinner parties
With Complimentary Cookbook, Entertaining & Life Tips
"Artists exist by a series of miracles" Noel Coward
(Volume I)
Published by Tery Fugate-Wilcox & Valer!e Shakespeare
Smashwords Edition
Copyright 2000 Tery Fugate-Wilcox & Valer!e Shakespeare
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you wish to share this book with other persons, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, please return to Smashwords.com & purchase your own copy.
Thank you for respecting the hard work of the authors of this book.
Watch for Volume II on Smashwords
Eternal thanks to our good friend
Diana Crane
without whose enthusiasm, encouragement
& support, we never could have finished it.
Prologue
Success comes from giving. It may seem counterintuitive, but the most successful people we know have a generosity of spirit & a giving nature, that makes them successful, not only in whatever business they choose to make a living but in living, as well. The key is to figure out what you have to offer the world. In our case, it was Tery's extraordinary creativity, coupled with my ability to make practical use of it. I loved to cook & entertain our friends, so we made practical use of that too.
Once you find what you can offer, you must give it freely. That isn't to say it has to be "for free"; only that the use of your talents must be what excites you & gives you pleasure. Compensation is strictly secondary. Tery freely offered his creativity to dozens of charitable committees for any cause we believed in. The fact that serving on those committees brought us into contact with many celebrities, as well as the cream of "High Society" was something that we didn't even realize at the time. It wasn't until much later when people began to express awe of friends/guests at our dinner parties, "Do you have any idea who's here?!!" did we begin to notice the large number of luminaries who had become our friends.
The other thing people wonder is how we can still be so much in love, after 46 years of marriage? When we fell in love, our love for each other superseded anything we liked, (or didn't like). That doesn't mean, "If you really loved me, you'd give up football…" or whatever. Just the opposite, "I'm in love with you: whatever you care about interests me too." In truth, I thank my lucky stars that Tery never cared about sports. If he had, I would inevitably have become as deeply immersed, if not more so than he, (as I did with art). I love fashion, so Tery not only records all the fashion shows for me, he taught himself to design all my gowns & jewelry, (brilliantly so; I even had a fan club, who chided me if I ever wore the same gown twice)!
Finally, we talk, talk, talk & talk some more. We tell each other everything; what's right, what's wrong, why we're angry; even our deepest hopes & fears. Every love story I ever saw or read would lose that inevitable heart-rending scene if, when the lovers talked, they actually said something. Mary Tyler Moore's classic, "If you don't know, I'm certainly not going to tell you!" says it all.
I include recipes from our constant entertaining because they are so easy & fun. If you can't have fun doing what you do, then you are doing the wrong thing. We rarely noticed when things got bad, because we were always having so much fun. To quote Andy Gibbs of the Bee Gees, "We'll never be bored having fun!"
Chapter 1: What's an Artist? by Tery
As we greet the celebrity host of HBO & her camera crew, I turn to look at the art lining the walls of the long gallery: the long strip of rusty steel an Arabian princess wandered in & paid five figures for; the nosecone from a "Mace" nuclear missile I'd covered with fluffy gold leaf, waiting to be shipped to a collector in Florida; the 55 gallon tank of tap water, in the window, green with the mother of all algae plants… A long table down the center of the gallery, has bronze glass place settings for more than 40 guests on an elegant old gold cloth, left over from the Guggenheim Museum's 50th anniversary Gala. Valer!e & I hold court in the center of the long table, as staff brings out platter after platter of food cooked by Valer!e. The guests from every corner of New York high society murmur approval & clamor for us to tell stories, "…the one about the military school, run by nuns!" "…the blue people?" "How about the 'What?' story? That's my favorite!" "How did I get here?" I wonder silently. How did I get here, from…
In the tiny farming village, just outside Kalamazoo, Michigan, "I want to be an artist" weren't words a kid from the wrong side of the (stock car) tracks uttered out loud. They weren't even words my deeply-buried artist's soul dared to form into thought. Saved from laboring in the coal mines of Pennsylvania to his death, by a $600 inheritance, my grandfather moved his family to Michigan, built a gas station, general store & tourist cabins to accommodate a newly mobile post war America. I fell asleep to the sound of Grandpa counting & recounting the change in his cashbox & awoke every morning to him counting it again. Italian but not a practicing Catholic, he allowed Grandma to raise me Methodist. Stern, kindly & very religious, she took me to church every Sunday, a fairly typical Midwestern church with its steeple & vaulted ceilings, but it had chandeliers made with fluorescent lights - very art deco. Years later, I duplicated those lights from memory, for an atrium I designed in New York.
Once, for my birthday, they gave me a shiny new silver dollar, I promptly put in the collection plate at church. Poor Grandpa had to go, (the only time he set foot in church) to retrieve it from the pastor! I still have it. One Christmas, miserable he couldn't afford one, Grandpa gave me a check, for "One New Bike". I was thrilled, however & "cashed" the check in April, just in time for summer. I still have that check too. Another Christmas, Grandpa gave me a BB gun. I ran right out to shoot something. I loved the sound of breaking glass & shot out all the windows of the (now unused) tourist cabins. My first work of art! I got in trouble for that but was upgraded to an old .22 rifle, when Grandpa commissioned me to rid the orchard of destructive woodchucks. If you whistled, they stood up, so you could shoot them. Berserk with killing fever, Blam! Blam! Blam! I emptied the entire gun into one. Grandma ran out to see what the racket was & found me standing over the dead creature repeatedly clicking the empty gun at it. She gently ushered me into the kitchen, put a cold wet towel on my face & held me, until I stopped shaking. That cured me of the hunting instinct. I only use guns for art.
I took life with my grandparents for granted, until I was old enough to wonder why. I learned then, my father was killed in WWII before I was born & my mother abandoned me, because I was born blue & she thought I'd die, (the blue skin was caused by a blood condition prevalent in the "blue Fugates" of Troublesome Creek, KY, where my father was born & was temporary in me because both parents have to have the gene for it to be permanent.) With the Army life insurance, ($5000.00, more money than she'd seen in her life) my mother took off to see the world.
When I turned six, she came to retrieve me with a sailor she'd married, "your new father!" & baby sister. She seemed shocked I didn't know her. They moved me into a "basement house", the practice of building a basement, under a government program, with just a bulkhead door sticking out of the ground. Families lived in them until they raised enough money to build the rest of the house. There were entire fields of them & they tended to attract lightning. When lightning struck ours, it went through my brass bed, jumped to a brass lamp, melted it, then disappeared into an outlet. Mother insisted I only survived because it was the first time I hadn't wet the bed! Like so many, my parents never did build a house above & basement houses finally became illegal.
That summer, Mom visited her in-laws in Florida to show them their granddaughter. For some reason, taking a 6-year-old son along wasn't an option, so they left me with the Fugate clan in Harlan County Kentucky. Abandoned, (again) my first task was to make it across the rickety swinging bridge, over a 200-foot deep ravine, while the kids shook it violently. Managing that, I'm given the "honor" of carrying water from the village well, introduced to Grandma Fugate, matriarch of the "hillbilly" clan & to a (blue) aunt, aptly named "Indigo".
We ate at a long communal table, by
the light of carbide lamps nicked from the coalmines. I went to bed
alone, thinking I was special but the next morning, it was full of
kids & dogs. They rafted down Troublesome Creek to get supplies
or to use the only phone in the community; washed clothes & took
communal baths in it. It was a bucolic existence but if you got sick,
you died.
Finally, I was retrieved but promptly put into boarding school. The government paid for expensive military schools my family could never afford, (presumably, so I could follow in my father's footsteps). First was Barbour Hall junior military academy, run by nuns, contained within a convent, Nazareth, in its own town inside Kalamazoo We called the nuns 'ster, short for Sister, as in "Yes, 'ster." "No 'ster." We slept in barracks, at one end of which was a small cubicle, where one of the Sisters slept behind eight foot walls that didn't reach to the towering ceilings. A tradition, to initiate new students, was to build a human pyramid, send the littlest new kid up to peek over the partition & report what the nun was doing. "She's taking off her rosary"... whispered to the boy below & each in turn passed it on. "She's taking off her apron... Now she's taking off her wimple..." then, "MY GOD! She's BALD!!" I shouted at the top of my lungs. Our pyramid collapsed & the nun came running out in her slip, shaved head for all to see. The next day, the partition was built to the ceiling.
I made the rank of Major & with the other officers, ran a gambling syndicate with marbles, the accepted currency we'd created. We set up elaborate games with ramps, spirals & constantly changing targets, making it virtually impossible to win. We even had "shills" who knew the tricks. If a nun showed up, a few quick swipes with our feet kept our secret. When a cadet ran out of marbles he could work off his "debt" as our slave. I had slaves polish my boots, do my homework, clean my room… I learned then, even crooks have to keep books! (So what's the point?) We eventually did get caught, were busted to privates but reinstated when the nuns ran out of officers. The nuns, considering the left hand to be the "hand of the Devil" also tried to "cure" my left-handedness, smacking me whenever I used my left hand which made me stutter. I stopped stuttering only after I left the academy & could use my left hand again.
High school was Howe Military Academy, an Episcopalian prep school of some repute in Howe, Indiana, grooming students for entry into West Point, or even to go directly into the army as officers. The students included an Arabian Prince, industrialist's son, "Scurvey Scovil" (can't remember his real name) & Sam Goldwyn's son, who got a Ferrari for passing grades. These were guys, a kid like me would never meet, much less have as buddies. There was a twice-life-sized statue of Sam Goldwyn, holding a reel of film in one hand & a book in the other, in the center of the "Quad" or front lawn, at Howe, in gratitude for several campus buildings, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, whose work I'd always admired, since many homes as well as the central park in Kalamazoo were all Wright designed.
I made up my mind to join the elite kids' special drill team, in chrome helmets, the "Hussars". The initiation to get in was to stand at the rifle range, while members bounced bullets back, until a ricochet hit you, (to prove how stupid you are). If you stood your ground, you were in. I still have that bullet. We got caught writing an inscription on the school's water tower, featuring the name of the commandant's daughter. As punishment, they shaved our heads, which was instantly the symbol of cool! When a teacher left suddenly under a "cloud", we broke into his (abandoned) house & discovered the floors were covered, ankle deep in porn magazines. They instantly became the currency of choice!
I found I could avoid tedious military duties by joining clubs. So I joined the cinema club, (in charge of movie night), glee club, chess club, (where I beat the local savant, playing like it was a game of chance) rifle club, (got a medal for "distinguished expert") French club & the band, which was a marching band in summer & a full philharmonic orchestra in the winter. Howe's reward for excelling was to give "smoking privileges" in a dedicated lounge in each barracks. Given the honor, smoking became mandatory.
By my junior year, I knew I didn't want to be a warrior & went AWOL. I wanted to be somewhere non-military. My folks finally let me try public school, where I formed the Roadrunner's Club & chased tornadoes for fun, so we made that the initiation for our club, (they're always about how stupid you are). One day we were chasing a tornado, when suddenly we were being chased by the tornado. As fast as my Hemi-Plymouth could go, the tornado was clearly gaining on us. Believing tornadoes can't turn, I screamed around a corner to the right, (girlfriends screaming the whole way) as the tornado made a sharp left turn! We stopped chasing them after that.
My earliest memories of sex were around 4. A neighbor girl & I saw two dogs fucking next door & started imitating them, (taking our roles instinctively). My grandparents & the girl's parents were horror-struck at the sight. It was the only beating I ever got from them. But my real initiation was by a Dutch girl. In fact, years later, when my little sister won a trip to NYC & came to visit us, with her new husband, Joe, we discovered we went to the same high school, though in different eras. As the subject turned to sex, I described learning the facts of life, bareback riding down by the willow trees, by the Kalamazoo River...with this Dutch girl..."Pam Fedorik!" exclaimed Joe. Apparently, she educated more than one generation of students at Galesburg High. At 14, I convinced my girlfriend Julie, a simple farm girl, with a great body, to take her bra off & leave it in the glove compartment, when I drove her to school. She had beautiful breasts. I also bought Julie a pair of "penny loafers" to wear; a big status symbol at our school, (with dimes instead of pennies). Though she chose to remain a virgin, she'd do a strip-tease for me in her bedroom window, when I took her home after a date.
At 16, my stepfather inexplicably decided to adopt me, adding Wilcox to my name. When they read my name, "Raymond Terry Fugate-Wilcox" at graduation, a kid broke up the proceedings when he shouted, "WOW! That's a big name!" My first love was art class; a terra cotta shark being my first sculpture. I also made endless drawings, all of which went on display in the trophy case at school, when the local papers, many years later, reprinted an article about me from the New York Times. I never stopped making art, turning everything I touched into works of art.
Chapter 2: The Meeting (Tery’s version)
College, in my neighborhood was to learn a trade, if you went at all. Being 16, I chose Ferris, founded by the inventor of the Ferris wheel, possibly the only college with one on campus. There, my teenage love of cars was to become my livelihood, with classes to tear engines apart, chop cars up & put them back together, repaired, re-formed, re-designed.
I worked on customizing my "big
fin" ‘57 Plymouth Fury, ("Christine" in the movie of
the same name). I "frenched' the headlights, taillights &
fins, (molded in, for smooth curves), removed the chrome, even the
door handles, installed bucket seats & replaced the back seat
with a fur-lined "bedroom" heaped with fur pillows. It was
to be painted peuce, but spent most of its life in dull, primer Grey,
known as the "Grey Ghost" in drag racing circles, (I was
called "Never-say-die!") But no matter how much I loved
tinkering with cars, my hidden soul kept emerging, as I used all my
spare time to make art; welded art, braised art, figurative art,
abstract art. I didn't know what those words meant, of course but it
made classes bearable. And there were women:
Parking up at the dam one night with a woman, (at 16, all college girls are women). I notice a figure teetering back & forth on the edge of the dam. I tell my date I'm going to check it out... come along or wait. She left. The figure is trying to commit suicide; her fiancé is married, with three children. I talk her out of that. Jan is blonde, stacked & Peggy Lee looks a lot like her. We embark on a wildly sexual relationship. She's 21, daughter of a famous psychiatrist & lives on "the Hill", the opposite of "the tracks". When she transferred to another college, she insisted she needed a ring, as "protection" from boys there.
One night I was sleepy, driving back to school & let Jan drive my freshly painted (peuce) Plymouth. Going through a tunnel, she hit a patch of ice, slammed on the brakes & let go of the wheel! As we spun around, all four sides smashed into the tunnel. I was heartbroken. Jan bought me a gold '56 Corvette, telling her parents it was an "engagement present". Her parents promptly announced our engagement in the Kalamazoo Gazette. So, at 17, I found myself engaged. The 'vette was my dream car; Headman Headers, Mallory ignition, dual quads, Traction masters, bored engine... As I cruised around campus, it had a magnetic effect, as girls vied for a ride. By Fall, the 'vette & I were dating a core group of seven girls, ranging from bimbette, (studying to be bimbos) to business-executive ingénues, (vocational college). We shared breakfast every morning, discussed classes, dating schedules… One morning, I confided I was engaged & was surprised with, "Who cares? We're just having fun."
At home for a break, my mother suggested I come meet a model down the street, a Shakespeare, (founding family of Kalamazoo), who had just run away from home. Since I spent an entire semester engaged to one girl & dating seven others, I wasn't interested. Mom insisted. Reluctantly, I went, wearing a suit, in a Studebaker station wagon...with my Mother. The meeting went very badly. The tension in the house was intense. Valer!e's sister was struggling with a new baby but incredibly, invited me to dinner. I surprised myself by accepting. Valer!e intrigued me, because she rejected me in no uncertain terms, wore high heels, just around the house & no bra. I hated to admit it, but Mom was right; Valer!e was special.
Recollection By Valer!e
My school was so small, its school bus was a station wagon. One high school student, on our bus was Babs, a voluptuous blonde. I worshiped her. I named all my dolls "Babs". Even in uniform; white shirt, navy shorts & saddle shoes with bobby sox, she looked supremely feminine. Babs was unusually nice to grade-schoolers, so I got up the nerve to ask, "Why do you always walk on tip toes?" "I'm training my feet for high heels." She answered, sweetly. Ooooooh! I thought that was sooo coool! From then on, I too was "training my feet for high heels"!
Back To Story By Tery
For dinner, I changed to my more common persona, black sweater, black jeans, black suede shoes & the gold 'vette. It worked its magic on Valer!e too... with a difference. The first thing she did was change my name…to Terry, my middle name. All my life I'd been Raymond; from grade school to Galesburg High, where I was "Ray" to my hot-rod gang. Here was a woman who would change my name. My, My. We were inseparable for the next three days, while I fell madly in love with Valer!e. On the second day I gave the 'vette back to Jan, told her to keep the ring & ended our "engagement", (I never had asked her to marry me.) On the third day, Valer!e finally agreed to marry me. I phoned my stepfather to announce, "I'm getting married." "I know," He replied, "to that rich girl on the Hill". "No," I said, "I'm marrying the runaway model Mom introduced me to yesterday," He growled, "Yer on yer own, kid." CLICK.
Chapter 3: Running Away from Home by Valer!e
I was born in the same hospital, (read that only hospital) & same year as Terry, in Kalamazoo. My Mother, Martha Ellen Wright was a successful author, with three published novels & many short stories in major magazines. (She couldn't bring herself use her married name, for writing). My father, Monroe Shakespeare was president of Shakespeare Sporting Goods. His father, William Shakespeare Jr. invented the "level wind reel", while courting my grandmother, as she demonstrated sewing machines. He got the idea of the first anti-backlash fishing reel from the mechanism to wind bobbins & founded the company. My father was a patron of Ayn Rand. Mother tells the story of Ayn stepping off the train in Kalamazoo, whirling around in her new mink coat, eyeing my mother with, "Oh. You've got one too." (Never buy your wife & mistress the same present.) I was 18 months old, when my father died. Mother, a much younger second wife (one year older than his son, Bill Shakespeare) chose to leave, rather than become matriarch of Kalamazoo society, as expected. In Scottsdale Arizona, where she'd honeymooned, she met & married "the Colonel", an Indian agent, famous for getting Hopis & Navajos to work together, (ancient enemies). Navajo Chief, Chee Dodge made him an honorary Navajo. We lived in a sprawling adobe ranch house on many acres of desert, called "Los Palos Fierros", for the ironwood trees, in the shadow of Camelback Mountain. We had stables, corral, horses, a goat named Abe, lots of dogs & cats. As patrons of Frank Lloyd Wright, we got to spend a lot of time at Taliesen West & in the circle house, a mini-Guggenheim, he designed for his son, our nearest neighbor.
I must have been precocious, because, as a toddler, playing on the sun porch floor in front of the Encyclopedia Britannica shelf, I learned to read, then memorize them, (with Mother's help). I remember being brought out, in my Dr. Dentons, (footed 'jammies for the younger generation) at parties to "recite the Encyclopedia, Valer!e". Gleefully, I'd rapidly chant, "a-asher, ash-ball, ball-car, car-cod, cod-dem, dem-eve, eve-gla, gla-hor, hor-kin, kin-mag, mag-mot, mot-pal, pal-pri, pri-sho, sho-tro, tro-zem, Index!" (I can still do it.) I started first grade at 4, partly because I could read, but certainly because I was the only first-grader in the tiny, boarding school for girls called Brownmoor. One miniscule building housed the 1st through 4th grades & another, the 5th through 8th grades. The huge defunct inn held the entire high school & dorms for the boarding students. When I got bored, I could do second, third & fourth grade lessons.
I did most of the "cooking for company" before I was old enough to sit at the grownup's table. As "chef", I was allowed in the dining room to take a bow before going back to the children's table for dessert. Once I mistook a paper bag of powdered sugar (donuts) for flour, (Mother didn't label them). When I tasted my sautéed chicken livers in red wine, I spat it out & ran tearfully to the dining room. "Don't eat it!" I cried, "It's sugar–not flour!" It was too late. "Oh! It was delicious," they chirped, "We thought it was a great new recipe."! I learned two things about entertaining at that very young age: Your idea of disaster is rarely shared by your guests & their palates can tolerate a lot more sweetness than you imagine.
After trying for some time, my parents had a son when I was six, a "miracle child" because Daddy was in his sixties & mother, over 45.They named him Edward Britt Myrick, so he could inherit his father's initials, but hated the nickname "Eddie". (All teenage bad boys were Eddie.) I remember calling, "Teddy! Come play with us." "I can't," he'd answer, "Mama's changing me."!! He drank from a baby bottle until he was old enough to go to the refrigerator & get it. Teddy loved to play with my friends & me: the Indian in "Cowboys & Indians"; our slave in "Princesses"; the villain in "Cops & Robbers". He didn't care, as long as we let him be with us.
By 12, I towered over the boys at 5'7". When we danced, my date's head nestled perfectly between my (nearly fully developed) breasts. When the head mistress refused to let us to dance close, we had no idea why. "Everyone else is; why not us?" we demanded. "Because I said so!" she declared & that was that. All the dances were with boys from Judson, the boys' school that complimented Brownmoor. It was the only times we saw boys. We formed liaisons among ourselves, that kids need naturally, to form, (called "pal-ing off", the equivalent of going steady). The teachers sat us down to explain how "unhealthy" it was. "There are names for things like that!" they exclaimed. We had no idea what they were talking about. (Two girls did, however, become a lesbian couple, years later.)
My sister & I were called "the fighting Shakespeares". She weighed about 200 pounds & had acne, which, in those days, was believed to be caused by chocolate - she was a chocolate addict. Her friends decided to cure her of the addiction, dancing around her constantly, chanting hideous, horrible things about chocolate – all too gruesome to repeat. It had no effect on my sister but I couldn't even look at chocolate for years. To this day I'm one of the few women you'll meet who doesn't like chocolate. Her best friend was Consie, daughter of one of the Wick brothers, who owned Judson. Together, they convinced her father & uncle to turn Judson coeducational. Just before graduation, the seniors' party at Brownmoor had vodka in their punch, were caught & for that, the entire senior class was expelled & refused diplomas. That, plus a newly coeducational Judson was the downfall of Brownmoor.
SO at twelve, I entered Judson High School & suffered the torture of being an innocent but buxom blonde in a school dominated by boys. Even some of the teachers tried to "educate" me in matters I knew nothing about. One teacher from India was smitten with me & fondled me in very private places, once asking if I "came". "What does that mean?" I naively asked, which so terrified him, he backed off. He was my Mother's favorite, because he'd come over & fix elaborate curries for us. I often wondered what Mother would think, if she knew what he was trying to do to me. I did learn to make fabulous curry dishes, though.
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Curry
Curry is wonderful, both for buffets & sit-down dinners. These serve 8- 10 on couscous or rice & are easily multiplied. Calypso Chicken w/ Pineapple: Cut 4 boneless breast halves, bite-size. Put 1 cup flour, 1 tbsp curry powder, salt & pepper in bag, add chicken, shake to coat. Brown chicken in oil; remove. Lightly brown 1 each chopped green & red peppers, 2 onions & 1 clove minced garlic in oil remaining. Drain & reserve juice from 2 cans pineapple bits. Stir in drained pineapple, 1 can undrained sliced tomatoes, chicken, ¼ cup currants, 1 teaspoon curry powder, crushed red pepper, to taste & dash salt. Cover & simmer 8-12 min. Stir tbsp cornstarch into juice; add to skillet. Stir 'til thick.
Peanut Curry Sauce: Brown chicken as above, remove. Brown 1 chopped onion, add chicken & stir in 1 cup plain yogurt, then 1 cup Spicy Peanut Sauce: mix 1 jar smooth or chunky peanut butter, 1 small can or ½ large crème of coconut, ½ cup lemon juice & 1 tbsp chili paste w/garlic, (in Asian section) to taste. Garnish with peanuts.
Banana Curry: Pre-roast 12 chicken thighs. Pour off & reserve broth. Process 4 ripe bananas with ¼ cup each lime juice & broth, 1 tbsp lime zest, 2 tbsp curry powder, 1 tbsp dry mustard. Pour over chicken. Bake 10 min @ 450. Green Apple Curry: 12 chicken thighs, as above. Cut 4 tart green apples & 2 onions bite-size & sauté 'til golden; add ½ cup white wine, boil 1 min. Mix ½ cup broth from roasting with 1 tsp curry powder & 2 tsp flour. Stir 'til thickened.
Coconut Shrimp Curry: sauté 4 chopped onions 'til lightly browned. Add 2 cloves minced garlic & ¼ cup grated fresh ginger. Stir 1 tbsp curry powder & 1 tsp cinnamon into 2 cans coconut milk. Add, with 2 cans sliced tomatoes & boil gently till thick. Add 2 lbs shelled shrimp & simmer 'til cooked through. If using frozen cooked shrimp, add frozen & just heat thru. Garnish with lime wedges & coconut.
Accompaniments: crumbled bacon; Mango chutney; chopped scallion; pistachios, peanuts, cashews; dark & golden raisins; flaked coconut; chili paste with garlic &/or Raita, (1 shredded cucumber, 1 pkg salad mix per pint plain yogurt)
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My sister & I rode our horses through the desert, to Judson. They had extensive stables, inter-mural polo, rodeo, (calf roping, bronco riding) as a class, full jumping & dressage courses. It must have been expensive, because all the boys had Porches, Austin Healy's, Karmen Ghias, Aston Martins, even a Ferrari. I went steady with Tony, who picked me up for dates in a "Dual Ghia". His father owned International Harvester trucks & hired designer, Karmen Ghia to create the car especially for him. Mother thought Tony was the greatest, because he was such a gentleman, for a High School kid. He made the mistake, however, of taking me golfing with him. As he "addressed" the ball, his feet started to paddle...like a duck's feet & his ass began to sway back & forth...like a duck. I watched him for what seemed an eternity, waggling & paddling. It was all over for me. I could never even look at him again, without seeing a duck!
A classmate, Nicky Charise, son of Cyd Charise & Tony Martin shot himself in the foot, presumably to get their attention. They came to see him then but didn't take him out of school. He managed to graduate, in spite of himself, to proud accolades of his parents. Peggy Goldwater was in my class & I spent a lot of time with that family. Particularly aware of her father's position as Senator, Peggy knew instinctively when to back out of a situation. The worst such occasion, was when her boyfriend got drunk, driving wildly & refused to relinquish the wheel. She made him stop & let her out. Furious, he screamed away from the curb, into a fatal accident. It devastated Peggy. Barry spoke at our graduation, was exceptionally charming & very moving. Years later, I found myself telling C.C. Goldwater, who was on many benefit committees with us that I dated Barry Jr. (then realized I was telling her I once dated her father)!
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Lying about Your Age
I almost never lied about my age. I didn't make myself older to drink & I never claimed to be younger... until we found ourselves running with the young international set. While sitting in a club once, Tery referred to the crowd as "kids". "What do you mean?" I asked. "I guarantee you none of them have been married for 20 years!" he clarified.
They were young enough to be our kids but accepted us as equals. Gradually, our age kept rolling back.
Tery calls it "Going on metric time", (you know, divide by 4, add 7….)
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I was part of a protest launched by the girls of Judson for the "right" to be spanked! It wasn't as kinky as it sounds. Like all boarding schools of the time, students got "demerits". Boys could have theirs spanked off by the headmaster but girls were grounded with time-consuming chores to work them off. We failed, (the impropriety wasn't lost on school officials) but they devised quicker ways for girls to dispose of demerits. I guess I had a high I.Q. because they read my name off at lunch, (death, socially) & sent me to take tests, to enter college at 14. I asked one of the attendants what "sin", "cos", "cot" & "tan" meant, pronouncing them like words, (the only definition of sin I knew, wouldn’t work). He told me, kindly, he didn't think I belonged there. I never did learn trigonometry.
Mother sold the main house in Michigan, when my father died but kept the three-bedroom, two-story guest cottage on beautiful Gull Lake, in Kalamazoo, for our summer home. We drove from Arizona to Michigan every summer & back again every fall, (Since boarding schools include Saturdays, we had extra long summer vacations, from May to October). Obviously, it'd be boring to take Route 66 every year, so one year we went by way of New Orleans, then by North Dakota, West Virginia, Washington D.C... In fact, I've been in every state of the Union but Florida & Alaska! We saw the Grand Canyon, Alamo, Giant Redwoods, Carlsbad Caverns, Nags Head, Ozarks, New Orleans, Niagara Falls, the Capital, Williamsburg, Roanoke, Monticello, Mount Rushmore, Yellowstone; just about every historic sight in the U.S. Daddy, (the only father I ever knew) was big on history. Early one summer, my favorite Uncle John Shakespeare showed up in a newly purchased Bugati & invited me to go with him to his home, Centralia, Illinois, where he had 27 Bugatis & custom machinery to make parts for them. If Uncle John was doing well, he bought Bugatis; if not, he sold Bugatis. I jumped at the chance & Daddy agreed to pick me up on the way to Michigan. Uncle John was an erudite & extravagant traveling companion but I soon found out why he was so anxious to take me along; Bugati's windshield wipers were manual! He needed me to operate them when it was raining. Oh! My arms got sore.
Every Christmas, we'd collect tumbleweeds, huge spherical, (dead) plants that literally tumble across the windswept desert, tie graduating sizes together in the form of a figure, cover with canned snow, put on eyes, nose, buttons & a scarf. Having never seen snow, it was a ritual I couldn't appreciate. My best friend at Gull Lake, a year-rounder, fascinated that I'd never seen snow used to save snowballs, in her freezer for me. We'd have an annual snow fight, throwing the frozen snowballs at each other. Unlike the movies, they were really hard!
We had a world-class ex-jockey, "Uncle" Phil, who managed the stables & taught us to ride. He'd broken every bone in his body, racing & was 4'2". We towered over him, even as kids. For years, he lived in one of the tack rooms & ate his meals with us. He must have been saving his money all that time, because he was able to bring his brother & family to Arizona, (from Italy). His brother held open house for the whole neighborhood, every Sunday for pasta dinner. His wife put a huge pot on the stove Saturday night, put in a whole chicken, a beef roast, a pork roast & a veal roast, then simmered that all night in homemade tomato sauce. We ate at long picnic tables in the huge back yard. First, rigatoni in sauce; then the meats, falling off the bone, on platters; finally salad, in the same bowl. To this day, one of my most spectacular dinners for a crowd is a simplified version of that recipe. It never fails to draw rave reviews.
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Sit-Down XI Rigatoni & Meats in Tomato Sauce
I scaled it down to 1 chicken part per person. Roast 30 min @ 400o 'til nearly done but still pink.
¼ lb each, per 2 people: pork chops or cubes, veal shanks or cubes, beef steaks or stew meat
Sear meat over high heat in batches until just brown. Put all meat & chicken in pot to fit with room.
Add 30 oz. good quality spaghetti sauce & 10 oz. can tomatoes per 10 people. (Use the whole can.
Extra sauce never hurts.) Simmer for at least 1 hour or up to 3 hours, 'til you’re ready to serve.
Add cut-up fresh plum tomatoes & fresh herbs as you wish, 15 minutes before serving. TASTE it!
Add salt & pepper as needed. Add a splash of wine if it gets too thick.
Serve sauce on freshly boiled Rigatoni (as per package) & serve meats on a separate platter.
Mixed green salad with lite Italian dressing, fresh-grated Romano or Parmesan cheese,
Italian bread & a good Italian red wine are the only accompaniments needed.
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I loved to model, for all the free clothes I earned instead of pay. Modeling was different then. Despite my 5;8" height & 22" waist, wearing a "bullet" bra & girdle were compulsory. The old book-on-the–head practice was real. We had to learn to glide along with knees slightly bent & absolutely no "bounce" which might reveal any "unsightly jiggle". We were instructed to "look pleasant but not friendly". Have you seen models lately? The Bounce is back! I won "Miss Scottsdale" & went on to Phoenix for the "Miss Arizona" contest, the winner of which would compete for "Miss America". I was asked my age then, for the first time & was promptly disqualified when I told them I had just turned 15. "If you were even seventeen, we could get by with it, because you'd be of age in time for the Miss America contest. But you're not even close! How did you get this far?" they exclaimed. Still, I rode in the parade as "Miss Scottsdale" in full cowgirl regalia. (Hopalong Cassidy was my hero.)
At
the time my own father died, he was also Chairman of the Board of the
1st National bank, of Kalamazoo. He left trust funds for
my sister & me, designating the bank as our legal financial
guardian. So, I'd go to my 14 fathers & say, "I need to go
to Chicago to buy clothes." "But we bought you those
expensive school uniforms. Why can't you wear those?" they
reasoned "You're trying to ruin me socially!" I wailed. Or,
"A trip to Europe is very educational." I pleaded &
went on a tour at fifteen, organized by my history teacher & his
wife, my Spanish teacher. Three of us, on the tour became instant
best friends. We were blonde, (me) brunette, (Bobby) & redhead,
(Lynn). We terrorized Europe & had the time of our lives. I kept
wiring back for more money, never specifying an amount, so I was sure
to get more than I dared ask for. Bobby, an orthodox Jew introduced
us to Bourbon & Coke. We introduced her to bacon & shrimp.
Her uncle was Ben Kadish, movie producer & escort of Leslie
Caron, who could be deliciously vulgar & get away with it. After
all, she was French. She'd make a sailor blush! They took us to the
best restaurants in London. We had cold lobster, magnificently
decorated, on huge silver platters; tiny filet mignon wrapped in
bacon; beef Wellington; pommes frite; veal cordon bleu; saltimboca;
profiterole towers; baked Alaska… I loved to cook but this was my
first introduction to haute cuisine & I never got over it. At
Claridges for tea, the waiter asked Bobby if she wanted milk or
lemon. "Both!" She blurted, unable to decide. At one very
snobbish restaurant, we ordered our usual, bourbon & Coke. "No
bourbon…scotch" said the sommelier. "O.K., we'll have
scotch & Coke" said Bobby, cheerily. "No. You won't."
he retorted flatly. He allowed us to have scotch & water. Imagine
our reaction to that!
Of course, with 14 fathers, I always got my way. Except once: When I was about to turn 16, I told them I had to have a car. "Oh! We've been expecting this", they replied. "We're ready to buy you a car." "Great! I want a Jaguar!" I exclaimed. "You're getting a Volkswagen", came the reply. "I don't want a Volkswagen! I want a Jaguar!" I protested. "Look, I'm the president of this bank & even I don't have a Jaguar", my "father" explained in his most reasonable tones. I looked him squarely in the eye & said defiantly, "Oh yeah? Do you have a trust fund?" (I was a bit of a brat.) "All right!" the exasperated board members sighed, "We'll compromise! We'll give you a Volkswagen...with a sun roof." How I hated that car! I constantly left the doors unlocked & keys in the ignition, hoping it'd be stolen. Once it broke down, so I pulled the dipstick out, like I'd seen at gas stations & it was dry. I walked to the nearest station to get a can of oil, then had to walk all the way back to say, "I don't know what to do! It won't go down that little hole!" (I was blonde too.) Everyone at the gas station called me "dipstick" after that!
Back in Scottsdale I was to go to Arizona State in Tempe, (at 16). Mother asked what I was going to major in. "Oh, English…" I answered vaguely. Being a Shakespeare, I had no choice but to get straight A's in English. Actually, I always got straight A's. I had a great trick for "essay" questions on tests: I'd start out writing clearly what I knew of the subject. As I got into murkier areas, only words I was sure of would be legible, then I'd continue to write much more, illegibly. It could even say "Mary had a little lamb" – they'd never know. Teachers have a lot of papers to correct. They'd read the first few sentences, see I had written a lot – A!
Anyway, majoring in English; "Oh don't do that! That just says 'housewife'" pleaded Mother. "Why don't you try something related to English – like journalism." So I matriculated in journalism. A very handsome man who looked like Efram Zimbalist Jr. stood up & told us, "Everyone majoring in radio & T.V. follow me." So I did. & I was. ASU had its own PBS station. I got to be stage manager, a first for a freshman. I was tickled the professors wore Bermuda shorts with suit jackets on camera, because no one could see them below the waist. It was great prelude to my life, working behind the scenes, organizing shows, dealing with temperamental artists. I loved it. Art history was my favorite elective. One day, a representative of Grumbacher paints made a presentation, showing slides of extreme close-ups of wood on an old barn or lacy rusted steel cans or stones of shiny mica; followed by a photo of what they were. I was profoundly affected by that lecture. The inherent beauty of nature & materials, how they weathered & changed stayed with me. All the art I care about is based on this simple concept.
One of Mother's favorite dates for me was a boy who sold diamond jewelry in a very expensive store in Scottsdale. I think Mother, an incorrigible romantic, imagined he'd envelop me in diamonds. I dated him for longer than I should have, because he was an avid glider flier. The first time he took me up, I was smitten, (with gliding, not him). It was amazing to float in the air with no engine, nothing but wind…& him, babbling incessantly. I asked him (politely) to "Please shut up!" From that moment on, he was madly in love with me, (rather a fellow glider). One night we went to dinner & then back to his place. I was wearing my favorite cashmere sweater & poodle skirt. As we kissed, he pulled my sweater up, exposing my bare breasts, (I never wore a bra). Suddenly, he shot gooey, smelly stuff all over my pink poodle skirt! I was livid! I never spoke to him again but missed gliding.
I "lost" my virginity in college. I was taken aback by how desperately boys wanted sex. It all seemed much ado about nothing. (Well, I am a Shakespeare.) Since they wanted it so badly & it mattered so little to me, well... But I never had an orgasm, didn't even know what the word meant. I got no pleasure from sex at all. To me it was a big, messy waste of time. Afterward, my overwhelming urge was to get away from the guy. I never wanted to see any of them again & never did, unless he was a teacher. Even then, I dropped the course as soon as possible.
One English Lit' teacher, from the "Beat" generation assigned us to write a series of poems about life, as best as we "inexperienced young things" could. One of my poems, buried among several, was:
Don’t say "fuck" when I make love to you.
Learn the difference.
He never commented on that particular poem but I got an A. I went to a psychiatrist around then & said, "I think I'm a nymphomaniac." He told me not to diagnose myself. When I told him about my life, he treated me as a pathological liar, "Now we know this is only in your mind, right? None of these things really happened, did they?" I never went back & have no use for psychiatry ever since. He did give me the idea my life was a bit unusual, though.
My favorite hangout was "Baboquivari" a coffee house, where we sang folk music & talked about the important matters of life. I ran the lights with a lot of special effects, like when my favorite singer began "House of the Rising Sun" I'd shut off all the lights, put a tiny red spot on his hand as he began the complex introduction on guitar, then gradually increase the size until he was bathed in red light. I was a hit with the singers. It was open only on Fridays & Saturdays from 11pm to about 3 am, after which we went to the all-night café for steak & eggs. My stepfather, a redneck, considered the Baboquivari a "Commie" den of iniquity. So, I'd push my car out our ¼ mile long driveway & coast back in about 4am with the lights out. Daddy thought I was lazy, sleeping in every weekend. In fact, I saw a UFO one of those mornings, just before dawn: it was gigantic & had bright orange lights blinking on its edges. It hovered for a very long time, then shot straight up in the air, in an impossible maneuver, (sound familiar?) Then it did something that changed it from a UFO to an IFO! It divided into four parts, each of which went a different direction. It was the Thunderbirds, practicing their famous "Lily" maneuver. Though I couldn't see it yet, from my perspective on the ground, the lights were the sun, glinting off their wings. They appeared to hover when they were flying directly toward me. They were thrilling to watch, even when they became Identified Flying Objects.
When my sister got married, they sold the summer cottage, moving into the cheaper neighborhood of tiny Galesburg, just outside Kalamazoo, so Mother flew there, for the birth of her first grandchild. One Friday night, while Mother was in Michigan, Daddy apparently couldn't sleep without her, because the owner of The Baboquivari came to the all-night café, terrified. "Your father is looking for you," he said, "& does he have fire in his eyes!" Daddy had a violent temper; (unwittingly, he nearly choked me to death, gripping my neck between his ankles, the last time he "spanked" me). Without Mother there to stop him, I figured I'd better run away from home. I went to our travel agency, owned by two gay guys, (Mother's friends) & told them what happened. They promptly handed me a ticket to Kalamazoo saying, if I could pay for it some day, fine but if not, they knew my father & would consider they saved my life. I got a friend to drive me to the airport & keep my car, then called Daddy, just before boarding the plane, so he wouldn't worry. Despite his temper, he did love me.
I stayed with my sister & her husband, even after Mother returned to Scottsdale, helped with the baby, cooked & paid rent for my room, from my allowance. My relationship with my sister was less than ideal & my brother-in-law was a horror. He constantly made passes at me, often in front of her. He once tried to crawl into my bed in the middle of the night. I kicked him so hard in the balls, he could barely walk for a week! A con man, he claimed to be an "artist" to avoid going to work, live off my sister & as an excuse to get young girls to pose for him – preferably naked. He ran through her first trust fund & wrote bad checks all over town. I bailed him out of jail more than once. (Later, knowing she'd never get rid of him as long as she had money, my sister walked into the bank & signed everything over to him.)
Chapter 4: The Meeting (Valer!e’s version)
One of my brother-in-law's "models" was the young daughter of the owner of the local general store, a real old-fashioned everything store; gas station, groceries, hardware, housewares, the works. Her mother was so terribly impressed by the whole idea of "Art", her 12-year-old daughter, posing in nothing but a sheer "baby doll" nighty was somehow acceptable. One time, she came to pick up her daughter, with her nerdy looking son, visiting from college…wearing a blue serge suit. To my horror, my sister invited him to dinner! "What did you do that for?" I demanded. "I thought you liked him." she replied. "I HATE him!" I screamed, (still a brat) but she somehow coerced me into staying. When he arrived for dinner, "Ray" was wearing tight black jeans, a black boat neck sweater & driving a gold Corvette. He looked a whole lot cuter!
I wanted any excuse to avoid my sister's ghastly dinner party. One guest just discovered his wife was secretly flushing her birth-control pills & was pregnant. As the ensuing drama unfolded, I jumped in the 'vette with, "Let's get out of here!" The first thing I said to my "date" was, "Why do they call you 'Ray'?" "That's my name," he replied, "but my middle name is Terry." "I'll call you Terry." I decided, "You are definitely not a Ray!" We had dinner at the local hangout, an old fashioned car hop, where cute girls, in skimpy uniforms attached a tray to your window & cars cruised 'round & 'round to check out who was there, flirt & show off their rides. It was the most popular place in town. Then we went up to Witch's Hollow, the result of an ancient meteor collision, with the usual lookout point for kids to park & began necking, (now isn't that an old fashioned word?) I said "No, no, stop!" like girls always did, before they demanded to be taken seriously. To my astonishment, Terry did stop. Now what were we going to do? We talked almost all night, about everything; how we both got "A's, though we almost never did homework; about everything we believed in; even about our deepest fears. I discovered a true soul mate. Everything I ever wanted to believe or hoped, he knew to be a fact! So sure of himself, he knew absolutely, the world was wonderful & life couldn't possibly be anything but wonderful. He asked me to marry him. Considering we were just eighteen & still in college, I suggested we live together. After all, it was the sixties. Nobody got married any more.
Now, I'd seen an animated set of cufflinks my sister got for her husband, for their anniversary. One was of a couple copulating, which I knew all about, but the other; they were doing something really strange. My sister explained oral sex to me with the horrifying conclusion that some women actually swallowed it! "Nooo! Really?" She added it was "the ultimate gift a woman could give to a man". WELL! I decided Terry deserved the ultimate gift a woman can give to a man. There was one minor detail my sister failed to mention...don't try it after a large dinner! I promptly threw up all over him! (& his 'vette). To my shock, he still wanted to marry me, assuring me I'd get better at it...with practice! Over the next two days, we were inseparable, with Terry constantly begging me to marry him. "What is your problem?" I asked, "Why can't we just live together?" Though I usually dated men twice my age, Terry wasn't like any man I'd been with. He actually cared what I was feeling, thinking, wanting. He taught me what "orgasm" meant, not with a dictionary either. I was rapidly falling in love with him but marriage, to me, was the best way to ruin a loving relationship.
On the evening of the second day, Terry asked me to follow him in my car. (When I committed to staying, a friend drove it there, for me.) I followed Terry to his fiancée's. (Did I mention he was engaged?) He gave her back the Corvette, (no mention of its smell), told her to keep the ring, jumped in my car & said, "There. I'm not engaged anymore. Now will you marry me?" "No!" I said, (I don't even get the 'vette out of the deal?) I must admit I was impressed, though. Who'd believe he'd give up a gold Corvette with Mallory ignition, Headman headers...for ME? Still, I held out until... On the third day, Terry threatened me; if I didn't marry him, he was going to go out with "The Animal". "Who's The Animal?" I asked. "I don't know," he said, "but if that's what they call her, she must be really something!" His classmates at college, troubled by his obsession with me, hoped to distract him with The Animal just as his mother tried to distract him from his fiancée with me. Though I doubted anyone could derail him, I decided not to take the chance. "Oh, all right!" I relented. "If it's so important to you, we'll get married."
Now came the problem of getting married. My sister had eloped to Indiana, because it had no three-day waiting period, like Michigan. They gave us precise directions to the tiny, very accommodating town where they got married. We found the town with ease & though it was late, the cop at the edge of town opened the license bureau to give us our blood tests & license; Then to the Justice of the Peace & his wife, (both in bathrobes). As his wife played a tiny organ, the JP proceeded with the ceremony, then stopped suddenly to ask if we were twenty-one. "No", said Terry, "Why? Do we have to be?" "Of course," the JP replied "I can't marry you unless you're both twenty-one." Tired, & disappointed, we headed back to Michigan, where the legal age was eighteen. Terry was in college in Big Rapids. We arrived at 8am, just as the license bureau was opening. They told us we'd have to wait three days for our blood tests. "Oh, we already have them!" offered Terry. "Do we take Indiana blood tests?" the clerk shouted to no one in particular. A man emerged to look at our papers. "Oh please don't tell me we have to do it all over again!" I pleaded, "It was just awful! They poked a hole in me & everything!" As tears welled up, the man relented & accepted our Indiana blood tests.
Terry's family was Methodist, so we tried the Methodist minister first. He'd just come in from fishing, with full-waist waders, fishing hat covered with lures & an impressive string of fish. The kindly minister refused to marry us however, on the grounds we hadn't known each other long enough & besides, the organist was on vacation. Three days, he insisted, was simply not enough time to discover each other's faults. "I don't need to know her faults," Terry shot back. "Whatever they are, they're the perfect faults for me." Still, no go. I was Lutheran, so we tried the Lutheran minister next. He seemed most concerned with the simple logistics of it all. The organist wouldn't be back until Monday; (organists seem to be essential to Midwestern weddings) these things take time & besides, we didn't know each other long enough. Getting desperate, we tried the Justice of the Peace. He looked quite the character, with a patch over one eye, reeking of whisky, (at 10am) & was so surly, "I refuse to be married by him!" I insisted.