The Bowdoin Orient

February 16, 2001
Volume CXXXII, Number 16

Two Years Beneath the Pines: Across the George Washington Bridge

by LUDWIG RANG, ALUMNUS CONTRIBUTOR

   The summer semester and my year at Bowdoin (I didn't know yet there was going to be a second one) were rapidly drawing to a close.
   "Beginning to feel a bit mellow?" one of my friends asked. I certainly was.
   On the other hand, there was my trip with Mrs. Applegate across the continent to look forward to. Nellie was extremely pleased to hear I'd passed my driving test, and of my chapel talk on the same day.
   Before setting out for California, Bill and Nancy's wedding was held, with me as Best Man, at the New Wagon Inn in Boothbay Harbor.
   Seated next to the Maid of Honour, whose name I forget but not her face, I had a wonderful time.
   Before going away, Nancy threw the garter her way, but it was I who caught it. Though having danced at many a wedding since, I never did get married. The last one I attended was that of my sister's eldest son six years ago in San Francisco.
   The idea I would soon be seeing this fabulous place, and maybe driving across the Golden Gate, filled me with excitement.
   "Don't get too excited," Nellie wryly remarked, "first you've got to get us across the George Washington Bridge."
   That important test passed, we spent our first night of a memorable trip across the American continent at a motel on the New Jersey Turnpike, in separate rooms of course, which was to be the arrangement throughout. Silly really, considering I was 19, and she 77.
   "Having fun with your grandma?" a waitress once said. Of course you wouldn't believe motel prices back in the fifties, out West especially, as low as $2.50 per room or cabin, adjoining sometimes.
   To make me feel "important," Nellie let me handle the money, giving me so much a day from which to pay for our rooms, and letting me keep what was left as pocket money.
   Naturally, I selected the cheapest I could find. Used to staying in luxury hotels, she got a great kick out of this.
   Another milestone was crossing the Mississippi at St. Louis, Gateway to the West.
   From here on out we followed famous Route 66, at one point staying with old friends of Nell's in Tulsa, Oklahoma-someone in the oil business, of course.
   Next came the Grand Canyon, an overwhelming experience. This time I was given more money so we could stay at Park Lodges, at the South as well as North Rim. From the latter, we headed north through the Kaibab Forest for Bryce, even more beautiful in its quite unique way.
   America's answer, in wind?eroded sandstone figures said by the Indians to have been people, to China's Terra Cotta Soldiers, not yet discovered.
   At Las Vegas, not looking anything as garish as it does today, Nellie couldn't resist playing one-armed bandits, with me watching fascinated and wanting to have a go too.
   Just then, a uniformed guard walked up and said, "Don't you think you'd better wait outside, son, while your Mom gambles?"
   I felt humiliated, but Nellie was tickled pink to be taken for my mother. To remind me of this experience, for my 21st birthday two years later, she gave me 21 silver dollars, all of which I foolishly spent. Neither could I have voted until then, had I been an American citizen.
   From Vegas, we headed for Hoover Dam, another great experience, and then straight across the Mojave Desert for Los Angeles, our final destination.
   Coming into LA from the San Fernando Valley on Interstate Highway 405 in late afternoon, we turned off onto Sepulveda Boulevard lined by palm trees throwing lengthening shadows. Through the open windows of the car, an Oldsmobile 98, with air-conditioning that had broken down in the desert-incredibly balmy air wafted in.
   Picking up Wiltshire Boulevard and heading west on it toward Hollywood, we turned off at Westwood where Nellie owned property, on the corner of Kinross and Glendon Avenues, with access from either to the patio of a restaurant on the ground floor and a small apartment for her own use above it called the Jewel Box.
   Built in the thirties after her divorce from a wealthy Manila businessman, it fully deserved the name. I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw it. An outside gallery led straight into the living room with wall-to-wall fluffy white carpeting, walls paneled in cherry wood, curving at one end with a hidden bar, and hung with authentic Japanese watercolors.
   Mine was to be the small guest room with Chinese silk tapestries, plus a tiny dressing room, so low one could touch the ceiling. This had full-length mirrors into which I, a born narcissist, kept staring to admire myself in a new jacket Nellie had bought me at the Westwood branch of Bullock's, a well-known LA department store, not far from the UCLA campus.
   She wanted her "German boy" to look smart, she said, when dining out with her, at the Beverly Hills Hotel, for example. Wearing enormous hats, huge dangling earrings, and dark glasses, half-blind Nellie might have been taken for Greta Garbo.
   Westwood Village then was almost entirely residential, with rows of neat little houses in adobe style and colorful front gardens. Many of these have since been torn down to make room for a giant Medical Center, quite a shock to me when sentimentally revisiting the area while staying with my sister, who lives at Laguna, for my nephew's wedding.
   The first thing Nell did before even unpacking was to call an old friend, Earl Boehme, a plastic surgeon, formerly at the Mayo Clinic in Boston, who'd done her face-lifts.
   She said she wanted me to meet Earl, his wife, and two children, a boy of 16 called Douglas and a girl of 18 called Gretchen.
   A real character, she said, "old Earl."
   "Put my picture out, darling," he told her, "I'm coming right over."
   The Boehmes, of German or Bohemian origin, lived in a large house with a swimming pool in Santa Monica. Earl's wife was called Bonnie, like my sexy Ivies date.
   Spending much of her time by the pool and on the tennis courts, Bonnie's lithe limbs were permanently bronzed. Needless to say, I was more taken with her than pretty but shy Gretchen, a freckle-faced redhead.
   Despite a flamboyant lifestyle, Earl Boehme was a devout Catholic, and later joined the hospital ship "Hope" for a year. While going round the world dispensing medical aid to needy people in underdeveloped nations, Dr. Boehme in the midst of his charitable work tragically died of a heart attack. More of "old Earl," another Unforgettable Character, next time.