life
Mama Told Me Not To Come
Yesterday, while writing in a coffee shop, a stranger decided to join me. Despite my suggestive glance at the room full of unoccupied tables, she plopped down at mine. “You’re a writer,” she said. And then she proceeded to interview me about the who, what, when, and where that inspired my newly completed (not yet published) novel…. I got over my annoyance and had an interesting conversation, which ultimately inspired this blog post and future posts. I explained to my curious new friend ….
In 1970s, Portland, Oregon, when stagflation met disco-mania, Portlanders seeking liberation from urban blight, lights out orders, and ambushed pipe dreams turned to sexploitation. Mary’s Club, which features prominently in my newly completed novel, and other strip joints packed in customers. X-rated theaters and bookstores of the ADULT sort exploded around the city.
It was a boom era fueled by relaxed obscenity regulations that led to porn palaces and live performances that ruled the neon landscape. Ultimately, The Oregonian Newspaper, where my grandfather worked, named Portland “the pornography capital of the West Coast.”
Religious cults, Vietnam protesters, and abortion rights activists heralded signs on every street.
The day before my fifteenth birthday, Grandpa pulled me aside at the Oregonian. “A lot of things aren’t making it into the paper,” he said in a solemn tone. “We got crooked cops, racketeers, editors on the take,” he whispered. “Pretty girls like you are in danger.”
He explained in one wide-ranging account how girls my age were easy prey, often collateral damage in a metropolis run by the mob. And how Portland’s corrupt politicians had earned a new moniker for The City of Roses; the vice capital of the northwest. Police corruption extended further than pacifying Teamsters on the docks; it was citywide. The thriving narcotics trade enticed officers to look the other way while their palms were greased and young girls vanished from the streets.
Grandpa never spoke to me about such shocking (to my naive sensibilities) issues. So, I listened.
Planted deep within grandpa’s warning that day were the seeds of my novel, Beyond This Wicked Realm to follow some fifty years later. For which I am seeking representation.
Grandpa made sure I had a bus pass, a library card, and books; the classics on which he expected a verbal book report. In his way, he was making sure his teenage granddaughter was too busy to go looking for trouble. Nonetheless, trouble was around every corner looking for her.
After school, a couple of days a week I worked for my dad in downtown Portland, just a few blocks from the Oregonian. I rode the bus into the city past businesses with handwritten signs in dark windows (victims of the governor’s lights-out orders), gas stations with NO GAS signs at the curb, hippies sleeping on park benches, and the yeasty smell of the Henry Weinhard Brewery that permeated everything. I leaned my head against the bus window and studied the girls walking up and down Broadway and Burnside. Some were my age, even younger; black fishnet stockings, black raccoon eyes, and faux fur cropped sweaters, sashaying down the streets, unsteady on their platform shoes. At ten in the morning, they already looked like they had been out partying and drinking all night. Maybe they had. I didn’t know. My grandma called them the lost girls. All I knew was that I never wanted to get lost.
One day when I got off the bus, as I hurried through a group of shouting Vietnam War protestors, a man grabbed me. He had an Afro the size of a beach ball, wore a long black leather coat, and dark glasses. He towered over me. At first, I thought he was one of the Black Panthers, though they normally weren’t in that part of the city. I was terrified. I didn’t speak.
Then he let go of my arm and said, “Hey foxy mama, you a stone fox.” He looked me up and down.
My eyes burned with tears, but I stood paralyzed.
“We could make some moolah,” he said, rubbing his fingers together.
But then, a woman who looked to be my mom’s age slammed his head with her protest sign and shouted, “PIMP! Leave that child alone.” When she did that, a group of protesters ran over to us, shouting, “Police … PIMP!”
That woman turned to me and said, “Honey, you should run now.”
Like Forest Gump, I bolted and ran all the way from 3rd and Washington to 11th, without looking back or stopping for traffic. People honked and shouted, but I didn’t care. I ran to the safety of my dad’s shoe repair shop on 11th. I never told Dad why I was out of breath and crying that day. He gave me a cup of tea and suggested I go read my book in the back of the shop for a while. He no doubt figured it was ‘that time of the month.’ It wasn’t.
It was the first time I was ‘approached’ by a pimp, but it wouldn’t be the last. They were on every corner trying to recruit girls for strip clubs, and worse, much worse. One day, when I left the Multnomah Library on 10th street, carrying my homework books, a man in a black car at the curb offered me three hundred dollars––in today’s money that’s over $2000.00–– to dance in a cage that would be hanging from a ceiling in a local nightclub. I backed away, turned, and ran like that protestor woman told me to do. I wasn’t going to freeze and cry again. I ran.
Being a teenage girl in 1970s Portland was like being a gazelle pursued on an open tundra to the soundtrack of Three Dog Night’s, Mama Told Me (Not to Come). I learned to run, hide, seek shelter, and NEVER talk to men in parked cars at the curb.
I had a few safe havens, good people around me, shelter, and some good sense handed to me by my family. I survived, but many didn’t.
I wrote this novel for them, the lost girls, those who didn’t make it out and those who did make it through the darkness to the other side.
This is the environment for my current novel, titled Beyond This Wicked Realm–In 1973, four women—a Holocaust survivor, a mobster’s daughter, a drug dealer’s abused girlfriend, and a lady-scholar turned drifter—form an unlikely sisterhood in a fight for survival against Portland’s illicit porn and drug trades.
That highlights some of the backdrop for my novel. In an upcoming post I will share my characters, women I’ve grown to love, mentors I wish I’d had, and lost girls I knew.
What’s Mold Got To Do With Politics?
Right now, I am staying in a hotel, a nice hotel, but still, away from my home, my husband, and dog. Mold was discovered in our attic and the removal, repair, and roof replacement has become a major ordeal. With my compromised immune system, I can’t be around the mold or the abatement spraying. So, here I am in a rainy coastal town 25 minutes from my house, with a fireplace and a view of the water––I know, poor me.
You’d think I’d be delving into writing more than I am, but I feel anxious and unfocussed like someone’s tearing my home apart in the middle of winter, and I’m not there to protect it. I know my precious doggo is scared and missing my cuddles, my husband is managing things as best he can from his home office––and maybe he’s missing my cuddles too. Anyway, it’d be better if I were there in person dealing with the contractors, instead of by phone.
Distractions like this tend to silence my muse. Stress is always a writing disruption, but this feels more like a psychic disturbance. Does tearing the shielding roof off my home and ripping the protective insulation out of my attic have spiritual significance to me?
In these troubling times of chaos and tearing our political agencies apart, leaving us exposed and vulnerable to the elements, I can’t help but wonder if that’s the true source of my soul-deep sense of unnerving disorder.
Even with mold in our attic we wouldn’t burn the house down. No, we eradicate and repair, because it is otherwise a great house. That’s what I feel should be done with our democracy, it’s a great house with some rot that should be eliminated. Instead, the house is being burnt down, and we are left exposed and in danger of all looming storms. And they are looming.
To ease my unease I’m taking walks, writing this in a coffee shop, and meditating on my life’s blessings that were once only impossible dreams.
So now, on the eve of our country’s nightmare, I count the blessings of dreams come true and feel empowered to do things once thought impossible: like being 70 years old and trying to muster my inner 17-year-old revolutionary, again––and sadly, to fight for the same things as before.
For me, participating in politics other than voting, attending city meetings, and door-knocking for a few politicians––and once, in the 1970s being quasi-arrested for protesting the Vietnam War, and demanding women’s rights, including abortion rights––has been random participation.
My husband says I’m too political. My grandson says I’m not right enough, and my granddaughter says I’m not left enough. So here I am, standing firm in the middle of a burning house, realizing that random participation is no longer good enough.
I have learned that I can’t fix everything––a tough life lesson––and it’s not my job to mend the world all at once. But I can heal some small part within my reach.
“Life is bristling with thorns, and I know no other remedy than to cultivate one’s garden.” François-Marie Arouet, a.k.a. Voltaire
Times like these, as with a writing deadline, force me to focus on what can be done instead of catastrophizing about what can’t and what’s gone wrong––instead, focusing my energies on what could go right. So, I started thinking about a few of those things that could go right, for example:
- Troubling times are opportunities to rise and get in-spirit. I turn to the elders for inspiration; Martin Luther King Jr., Voltaire, Margaret Mead, The Bible, Edmund Burke, J.R.R Tolkien, and so many others. I’ve included their words below.
- Activists who in the past faced a drought of public interest are now facing a tsunami of awareness and volunteers, turning helplessness into hope. From immigrants escaping violence, food-deprived senior citizens, and underprivileged kids in need of schooling, food, and shelter, to the unhoused we see in every city, there is no shortage of ways we can make a difference.
“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.” – Margaret Mead.
3. The rules of routine politics have been tossed into a bonfire––no more business as usual––it’s time to engage anew, rise from those ashes a bright and radiant phoenix of this modern revolution. After all, WE ARE THE PEOPLE damn it!
4. This is a unique opportunity to turn the tables and capitalize on intentional chaos (being created as a strategic plan to distract) and alter the political landscape of our country. It’s time to challenge elected officials and compel them to resist this inhumane administration.
“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” – Martin Luther King Jr.
5. As writers, activists, and concerned citizens we must reevaluate and revise the conditions of debate around issues concerning our society at large. It is time to eradicate the mold under our roof, to reign in our spending without harming those most in need. Time to tax those inclined toward greed. It is time to get big money out of politics, time to do away with the corruption of organizations like citizens united, deliver a gut punch to the donor class (a plutocracy), and to alleviate greed and corruption to the best of our ability. It’s time to build that sheltering roof for our communities. It’s not time to move backward via Project 2025, but forward to a new humanity. And that takes active participation.
“Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves; ensure justice for those being crushed.” – Proverbs 31:8-9
6. Go sign up for something, lend your voice, carry a sign, contact your representatives (repeatedly) about climate change, women’s rights, voter rights, gun control, civil rights, immigrant rights, and so much more. Use your voice to speak up against evil.
“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” – Edmund Burke
7. Visit sites and resources like the MASA––Let’s Make America Smart Again website for free resources, even print your own posters and so much more.
8. Right now, our house is burning, but it’s an opportunity to remodel and build a new house with a mold-resistant roof.
“From the ashes, a fire shall be woken, A light from the shadows shall spring…” — J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring
Come on fellow citizens, let’s be that light!
Fight or Flight – Life Lessons I’ve Learned
We all land on one side or the other of the ‘flight or fight’ issue. And anyone who knows me will likely say I’m a fighter. And anyone who knows my mom will tell you she’s a flighter. It’s been a long standing joke in the family, ‘Mom’s on walk about’ always meant she may be gone for a day or two, or a year. We, my three brothers and me, grew up knowing she may disappear at any point, so we took care of ourselves. I think I became that fighter because someone had to stay and take care of things.
When she was 80 years old I had to take her driving privileges (keys and car) away before she crashed THROUGH another Arby’s drive through window, or hurt herself or someone else. Mom has always been active and on the go, so ending that part of her life was difficult and sad, no more garage sales, no more Value Village and no more senior breakfast specials at Denny’s or their dueling rivalry, Shari’s Restaurant, and no more ‘flight’ capabilities. I wasn’t sure how she’d handle not being able to escape.
Soon it was evident that living on her own was no longer a healthy situation: despite her youthful face and attitude, mom has never liked vegetables or exercise and so was in poor health for a modern day 80 year old. We soon found a retirement home in her area. My brothers and I hoped that the retirement center would provide ample activities to keep her socially, mentally and physically active, like in high school. After all, she always said her happiest time in life was high school: of course, as her child that’s gratifying, ‘thanks mom’.
And though mom spoke of the other residents as if they were old people and she couldn’t figure out why she had to live with them, at first it seemed like it might work out. At least the socially active part kept her fully engaged. And by fully engaged I mean that she and her new cohorts in the ‘home’ became like any high school’s gaggle of mean girls. And in her early 1950s high school, my mom – a beauty queen, entertainer and one of the prettiest girls in school, sadly, was a leader of one of those toxic packs of mean girls. So mom finally returned to her youth, her happiest time; 
gossiping, mocking and making fun of some of the other (80 plus year old) girls. This regression was unexpected (though not surprising) and sorely disappointing – proof that even old leopards do not change their spots. Obviously, who we truly are is revealed in stressful situations, and apparently times of boredom.
I soon realized that much of their gossipy activity was due (not entirely) but largely to monotony. The home she was in did not manage a lively activities calendar, which I have since learned is critical to a retirement community. This means that there was very little outside stimulation or visiting entertainment, so mom and her cronies created their own. And left to their own diminishing devices meant mom FREQUENTLY asked me to come in and read from my novel or do a talk on travel to Europe with my ‘fancy gadgets’ – her words to describe my laptop and Power Point. She’s always been proud of me, so, I did do presentations, talks and even sat in on a few of their ‘happy hours’ with them.
Mom called their happy hours the ‘dark times’ due to the substandard music and or other entertainment during their oft-failed attempt at one scanty hour of happiness per week.
I always brought a good bottle of wine and we smuggled it in so we could have a decent glass of wine instead of the boxed mystery elixir they served. Mom often invited her closest friend to sit with us, a one-time (and lifelong) airline stewardess who still dressed the part; small silk neck scarves from Paris tied in a perfect knot at the side of her neck, trinket jewelry from Asia, and sweaters and vests made in Ireland, red lipstick and short bleached blonde hair. She was 90, never married, always a beauty who traveled the world and who somehow landed in this home with no one to visit her and restricted to traveling with her walker only as far as the front lobby. The only thing that truly bonded these two women was their fading beauty, their tendency to be mean girls and their STRONG desire to escape the place, the age, and the circumstances where they now found themselves – like Alice after falling through the rabbit hole – shocked and surprised at their surroundings, wondering, how did this happen?
I’m confident that if either of them could still drive we would have had a Thelma and Louise state of affairs.
Things were copasetic for about three years, and during those years my brother who lives in Portland handled a great deal of what it takes to manage her healthcare and weekly shopping trips, and I handled the rest from here in Seattle. It took years and a great deal of paperwork and financing, but we finally had her set up where she was safe, had a nice place to live, meals, meds, personal care aids, and lots of caretakers on duty 24-7.
Still, mom constantly complained about everything in the home, begging me to come down (from Seattle to Portland) to entertain her friends, and constantly tried to find ways to bust out of the place, the ‘big house’ she called it. One year, after we had argued on the phone about her moving out on her own; which would have meant no one to cook for her, check her insulin, give her the correct amount of her meds, and no alert button to press if she fell, I agreed to drive down and take her to a local Halloween party at a neighboring retirement home. When I arrived, she came down to the lobby of her building dressed as a prison inmate (black stipes, hat and a chain around her ankle). Ever the actress, and always one to make a theatrical point.
That day I realized she never has been and never NEVER will be happy, so I’d settle for keeping her safe. My mother makes most people feel helpless because she is never happy or satisfied. Trying to please someone who will never be pleased is exhausting, and helplessness is soul sucking, so I stopped trying to make her happy. But safe, safe I can live with.
Anyway, during the last two years her stewardess friend grew weaker and weaker, no longer able to even travel from her room down the long hallway to mom’s apartment. Then two of mom’s other friends died, which is not uncommon in a home for the elderly, but remember, in mom’s mind she was still an imprisoned teenager trying to find a way out.
But then the stewardess died. Mom went silent for several weeks. Barely any conversation at all, not even complaining, which had me worried. But I should have known better, after all, mom’s a runner.
All of a sudden, I got a call from my two brothers who live in a small town on the Oregon Coast. Mom had somehow convinced them she should live in their house and that she could take care of herself, it would be no big deal. She swore them to secrecy, and covertly made all the arrangements to break out of the big house. Those two unsuspecting (ever culpable) brothers had never been involved in all the doctors’ appointments, and overall healthcare mom required, like my other brother and I had been. So now they have their hands full and because they went along with her secrecy, I wish them well. I can’t help them, but I wish them well.
As I said, mom’s a runner. Not a fighter, but a flighter. The death of her comrade in mean girl affairs stunned mom’s teenage sensibilities to her core, disturbed her naïve sense of mortality. When her friend took her final journey from this world, mom absolutely could not comprehend what was happening – Alice lost in (what’s the opposite of Wonderland?) anyway, mom’s flight reaction has always told her to run. And run she has. But this time there’s no running from old age. You have to befriend aging, I always told her, eat your vegetables, take your walks, work out, laugh, enjoy life, don’t resent it, and treat others as you would like to be treated, and so on. And though this is not and never will be mom’s credo, it is mine, and for that I owe her a debt of gratitude for always showing me what not to do. She’s a great life guide.
As a writer I always observe others, trying to figure out why they do, say or act the way they do. It’s all material, right? I’ve formed most of my theories on life based on how to not be like my mom in most ways. Don’t get me wrong, she is loving to her children, and as far as I know has never killed anyone (I feel the strongest urge to type ‘yet’ right here, but I won’t.)
Anyway, additionally I learned three life lessons from mom’s retirement home experience; people do not change their spots as they age, and people who live in those homes can get bored, and that I can do something to help them – because when you help someone else it assuages your (eternal) sense of helplessness.
I can’t do anything for my mom who is already calling my other brother begging him to rescue her, but I can be a little comfort to others. I volunteer at local retirement homes to read to residents, talk about my book, or the history that went into the back story, or talk about being a cancer survivor, or my travels, or even gardening, whatever else I can do to alleviate their boredom for one afternoon.
When I did a presentation about my novel last week at a local retirement home there were three Korean War veterans in the audience, which is rare. One man patted my hand as I left and thanked me for writing about the Korean War. He had tears in his eyes. He said that while listening to me talk about my protagonist (a Korean War Hero) he felt like a young man again, a soldier, he recalled the beauty of the Korean countryside. He said that part of him had been asleep for a good long time, and said thank you for waking him up and reminding him of things long forgotten. He warmed my heart and confirmed for me that just visiting with people can make all the difference on the world.
There’s nothing I can do to change my mom’s experience with aging, but I can add a little happiness to the dark times others may be experiencing on their final journeys. That much I know for sure.
Mindy Meyers-Halleck 
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