99 MINUTES, NANCY SILVERTON SHATTERS WORLD RECORD FOR GOING FROM SURGERY TO SHOPPING

An American woman utterly demolished the long-standing world record for going from a hospital bed for surgery to a clothing store for shopping when she left Cedars Sinai Medical Center in West Hollywood on Friday at 10:00 am and was at Noodle Stories on 3rd Street trying on their new line from Italian clothing designer Daniela Gregis at 11:39 am..,

Just in 99 minutes from surgery to shopping.

The mythical 100 minute mark had been broken.

Nancy Silverton, a revered chef from Los Angeles, had been “put under” at 8:00 am for a operation to remove a minuscule lump on her breast. After extremely upbeat news from her renowned surgeon Dr. Giuliano, she quickly returned to her normal self.

As Michael Krikorian picked up her up to take her home, Silverton ordered him to Noodle Stories.

“You just had surgery and now you are going shopping?” said an incredulous Krikorian.

“Yes. What do you think i should do?,” Nancy said. “Go to sleep. You don’t sleep after good news. You celebrate. and Caryl just told me Daniela Griges is in town.”

“I thought we were gonna watch a movie?”

“We will but later,” said Nancy. “First to Noodle Stories. Your “Casablanca” and your “On the Waterfront” can wait.





THE FICTIONAL TRIBUNE IS OPEN TO THE PUBLIC

The original newspaper The Fictional Tribune, based on the the mythical “Mozza Tribune”, is going public,

Find it here at https://www.thefictionaltribune.com and check it out. To let you know a front page article about someone you care about is $75. and the name of each paper can change to where your loved one lives. It could the Hollywood Tribune or the Encino Times or the Bakersfield Examiner.

The Tribune will feature a "front page article" about someone you care about, complete with a banner headline and photographs.  This article will be written by me, Michael Krikorian, an award winning journalist, formerly of the Los Angeles Times, Fresno Bee and freelancer for L.A. Weekly, the Armenian news CivilNet and some others. 

As you have figured out by my "fictional journalism", which has been trademarked, the story will be made up, but with your essential help.  I will interview you and whoever else you might suggest and incorporate this into the story.  Among my questions would be “What are a few of our subject's favorite things in life?   By "things" I may mean hobbies, activities, songs, singers movies, actors, historical eras and people. Anything they love.  Then I will write the FJ, fictional journalism about them.  

As an example, recently. my girlfriend's 5-year-old grandson Ike won a trophy at a soccer camp.  I wrote about that with FJ added to include he beat out soccer great Lionel Messi, who was "quoted" in the article.  I like to think that 20, 30 years from now when Ike stumbles on the Tribune article in a desk drawer, he will have a fond memory.

That is part of what I am offering you; A fond memory years from now and a good smile and warmth in your heart the day the Tribune on your loved one comes out.

But more than that, the Trib is for someone who might be down and out, might even be quite sick.  I am here with my Fictional Journalism to lift them up. Maybe the story I am proudest of was one about Paul Schrade, a friend of Nancy and mine and the former head of the United Auto Workers. Paul was shot in the head in 1968 along with Robert F. Kennedy at the Ambassador Hotel. Paul lived 54 years before he showed up for his “Reservation” for dinner with Bobby at heaven’s greatest restaurant. Read it below and hopefully you’ll understand what FJ is about.

And as you can see below, the Tribune is not always fictional. The frightening tale of a car crashing into chef Walter Manske was for reals.

A full front-page article with photos is $75. However, a story can go on for pages, if so desired.

HISTORY - The beginning of Fictional Journalism, at least when I first got paid for it, goes back to 1974 when Cycle News published a piece I wrote about motocross. What made me most proud, well, after seeing my byline, was that Cycle News never published fiction. Yet here was my story about the Motocross Mafia conspiring against Belgian champion Joel Robert. That was 50 years ago. Crazy.

Since then I have dabbled at FJ, including a series of stories about Nancy and our friends entitled “Our Dysfunctional Family” which provided an often needed laugh to our, well, our dysfunctional families.

PRESENT - What really kicked my fictional journalism into high gear was writing The Mozza Tribune, an in-house newspaper for Nancy Silverton’s restaurants Pizzeria Mozza, Osteria Mozza, Chi Spacca and Mozza2Go. I would and still do, write about the staff and what’s going on. It’s a lotta fun for me and the staff loves it.

I think you’ll get a kick out of it as well.

A KILLING ON BEVERLY BLVD. & A REVIEW OF THE GOLDEN GLOBES, ANOTHER ONLY IN L.A. STORY

A little more than a week ago, on  the day after the Golden Globe Awards, I was having coffee at Go Get Em Tiger on Larchmont Boulevard when I heard a story that made the word “surreal” come alive for me and exemplified the worst and best of L.A. 

I was  at a four-top surrounded by  10 other people on the sidewalk patio, most of us semi-regulars who frequent the coffeeshop  for our morning world news report.

Off to my left, some folks were reviewing the awards show.  “The Bear” did well. Jo Koy soldiered on despite several duds.  DeNiro, Meryl were there. That Ali Wong, from “Beef” showed up It was a mediocre review.  

As they compared notes,  the guy to my right,  David Strah, said, ‘Man, I had an experience last night I gotta tell you about.”

Strah, a psychotherapist and author of “Gay Dads”, was returning home Sunday night around 6:30 p.m. with his partner Brad and a friend from “a wonderful, uplifting, fantastical experience” at Luna Luna, on exhibit on 6th Street. It’s an amusement park/art installation by David Hockney, Jean-Michel Basquiat and others, including the artist I think of whenever I hear the word “surrealism”, Salvador Dali. First assembled in the 1980s, then mothballed, it has been brought back into existence in L.A. by Drake, the Canadian rapper. 

As Strah and his companions  drove home west-bound on Beverly Boulevard  near Hoover Street, the car in front of them swerved to go around something in the road. Strah’s group realized it was a man in the street. Their first thought was that a drunk had passed out. They  pulled over and called 911. 

“Is he moving?” the operator asked. No, they said, but it was dark. “Can you get out of the car and see what’s going on?” They did and reported back. He was  barely conscious, in a bad way.   “Can you start doing chest compressions?”

Strah went into action. “I straddled him and started pumping away. It was pretty gruesome. His mouth was moving and his eyes were open but not looking at me.”

Then they saw how much blood there was.  On the sidewalk 10 feet away. On the man’s shoulder and all the way down to his waist, and now all over  Strah’s hands. Dark, nearly black blood.

The coffee drinkers across from Strah and me were still talking about the TV show.  Taylor Swift apparently was not very pleased with a dig Koy delivered  about her. Only in L.A. does a man found bleeding in the street compete with an awards show review for attention around a coffee shop table. 

After about six minutes, Strah continued,  paramedics and LAPD showed up and took over. Strah and friends left. One , circled back after he dropped of the other two. He learned that the man had died. This was not text news, so he drove back to tell his friends. 

Damn,” I said to Dave. “After Luna Luna, and Salvador Dali,  you come across surreal for real. Turbocharged surreal.” 

The next day, I went to the northeast corner of Beverly and Hoover and tried to find out something more about the man who died. To humanize him. 

Calls to the homicide detective from Central Bureau who is handling the case  and the L.A. County Coroner’s press office confirmed the incident, but not much more. Same with LAPD press relations. The victim was white, about 45- 50 and had been shot multiple times. 

Where he died, there is an abandoned minimall scrawled with graffiti. I found a homeless man in a tent who said he  knew the victim. “Yeah, he was homeless, and he was always nice to me. But I know he was aggressive with a lot of people down the block. It’s sad.”

All homicides tell a sad story. But for me, this story was more about David, Brad and Kirby, the guys who stopped. Out of dozens of cars that sped by the corner, some surely close enough to see the altercation or the result, these three tried to help a stranger. 

They inspired me.  Not that what I did next  remotely compares. 

On my way to an ATM at the corner of 1st Street and Larchmont on Friday, I saw  a car with its hood up and a guy looking at the engine.  After I did my banking  the man  was still there. I  asked what was wrong. 

The engine had overheated  and he couldn’t open the radiator cap to put in some coolant.   I am something  of an expert on overheated cars. I  got the radiator cap off, the coolant got administered.  The man asked my name as I was walking away and said, “Thank you, Mister Mike.”

I thought, “No, thank David Strah and his friends.  

Yesterday, Tuesday, I heard agaon from the coroner’s office. They still hadn’t found any of the victim’s family.

Anyway, did you happen to see the Emmys on Monday?      







WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION DOWNGRADES BRAIN CANCER TO ‘A MINOR ANNOYANCE’ AFTER SUSAN BRINK KICKS ITS FUCKIN’ ASS

Up until about two weeks ago, the mere mention of “brain cancer” was enough to send a bone chill through anyone’s body. Around the world, brain cancer was thought to be the bad ass of diseases, a condition so numbing that the most complex of all things - the actual human brain - could not deal with it.

Not anymore.

A Los Angeles woman, Susan Brink O’Flaherty, known as “Sista Suzie” has so convincingly kicked the motherfuckin’ shit out of some brain cancer that foolishly stumbled her way that the very mystique of the illness has been shattered.

“Brain who?” smirked Sista Suzie as she relaxed after getting some treatment to completely squash the cowardly cancer. “I’ll admit when I first heard I had some melanoma and some brain issues, I freaked. Who wouldn’t back then?”

(For the record by “back then”, Brink O’Flaherty is referring to around Sept 23, 2023, more than 400 hours ago.)

But since, with the brilliant doctoring of Dr. Ray Chu of Cedars Sinai and Dr. Omid Hamid at the Angelis Clinic and Research Center, Susan Brink has paved the way for others from the myriad of streets throughout the world - from Success Avenue in Watts, America to Jonathan Gold Avenue in Tel Aviv, Israel to Rhino Row, in Bangui, Central African Republic, to Mother Teresa Blvd in old Calcutta, India to Shisk Kebab Lane in Yerevan, Armenia, to Baba Ghanouj Street in Beirut, Lebanon to Chicken Kiev Square in Bakhmut, Ukraine to Sophia Loren Piazza in Naples, Italy and Ayrton Senna Freeway in Rio de Janiero Brazil, to Seven Samurai Avenue in Gardena, Japan that it’s not a death sentence anymore to get some brain cancer..

It’s just a pain in the ass. An annoyance. Now pass the 1947 Chateau Cheval Blanc and tell me about your life.



MADD RONNIE'S FINAL STEPS TO SIXTIES IN PEACE

 A few weeks ago I cell phoned Big Cat, a legendary member of the Rollin’ 60s Crips, who the LAPD described in a 2003 injunction against his Crenshaw/Hyde Park-based street gang as “a shot caller…… who instills fear in the neighborhood.”  I could see that, back in the day. Big Cat, who legally goes by Kevin Doucette, happens to be an old friend of mine who I met about 28 years ago while covering Watts and South Central for the Times and who has helped me out in dark times. In 1998, I wrote an article about him at a meeting led by his brother Mustafa, aka Li’l Cat, and Malik Spellman trying to quell gang violence in Inglewood.

Anyway, he answered my phone call, I asked how he was doing and he said, “I’m heartbroken.”

Heartbroken? Big bad Big Cat heartbroken? Heartbroken is for some 13-year-old Emma whose crush went to see “Barbie” with a 14-year-old. 

But Big Cat heartbroken?  What the hell happened?  He told me.

“They killed Madd Ronnie,” Kevin Doucette said in his trademark gravelly voice. Wow, I thought, Madd Ronnie got killed. Big Cat continued.  “They shot Madd. Some 16, 17-year-old kid jumped out the car and started blasting. I got shot in the thigh. Again. But Madd is dead.  Believe that? Madd Ronnie is dead.”

Madd Ronnie, aka Grant Lyons, born 11/27/63 was killed 8/19/23, exactly 100 days shy of his 60th birthday, something he was – in his “theatrical fashion” – making a big deal about. “60 for 60!” he would say. “A 60 turning 60!”    I guess being in the Rollin 60s and making it to 60 years of age is quite an accomplishment.

Madd and Big Cat and several others were hanging out that summer evening around 6:30 p.m. in front of a house on Keniston Avenue and 58th Place, a few blocks west of West Blvd, a couple south of Slauson, a block from Momma Kris Child Care Center. Nearby liquor surveillance video captures a car driving by and, shortly after driving by again, and parking. The young shooter exits the car and almost immediately begins firing. The first four bullets hit two parked white cars.

 “I thought it was firecrackers.” said Big Cat who was with others sitting on milk crates and shooting the breeze.  Madd Ronnie was standing, his back to the shots. Suddenly, he lurches forward, his back arches. Grant Lyles takes three or four stutter-steps, his last, and he starts to fall.

“I got up to break his fall, but I got shot in the leg,” Big Cat said. “I‘m trying to pull him closer to a car so it can shield us and I held him. Madd Ronnie took his last breath. I had held another homie long time ago and I know the last breath. His lungs make this gargled fast whoosh sound. There’s the whoosh and air and blood come out of his mouth. His last breath. I laid him down.”

Personally. I had never met Madd Ronnie aka Grant Lyons, but I’d heard of him for ages. I guess it was something about his street name that intrigued me. What was he so mad about that it became key to his streetname? 

Even in the 2003 gang injunction prepared largely in part by an officer Jeffrey Martin #32877, a major portion of the two-page report on Grant Lyons talks about his anger and mentions him often yelling at officers and calling them “bitches”, giving them the middle finger. The report says Lyons would yell at them “I’m Madd Ronnie!” and “This is my hood!” as his middle finger reverse-saluted them.

Some of his fellow 60s told me he would cuss out police more than anyone they knew. If calling an LAPD officer a “bitch” was the equivalent of a Major League Baseball home run then Grant “Mad Ronnie” Lyons would have been Barry Bonds.

But the “mad” face, the scowl, was often just an act, his homies said. “Most the time, he was putting on that face and he wasn’t mad about anything,” said a friend.

I’ve covered more than my share of killings, but even I got to wondering why a large swath of our city was in deep mourning over the death of Madd Ronnie. At his funeral last Monday, the several hundred gathered were silent as two white horses pulled a white carriage carrying Madd Ronnie’s casket.  The outpouring of love and ache on Facebook was impressive, too.

After talking a several people who knew him, I figured it out. Madd Ronnie simply loved where he lived. He loved his neighborhood.

“Ronnie promoted the neighborhood,” said his friend of 47 years Tim Chaney, a information system analyst. “Ronnie had been living in Hyde Park/Crenshaw area for 55 years and he truly loved the neighborhood.”

He made this part of Los Angeles seem like a small town where everyone knows each other and looks after each other. It was not unusal for Madd Ronnie to pull up to a friend’s house and the two of them take a walk. And others would join in and, before you knew it, 15, 20 people were in on that walk, stopping in neighborhood clothing shop or a liquor store or a mom-and-pop market. It was not some dangerous ‘hood. It was his ‘hood. He knew and greeted people’s kids, parents and grandparents.

When I suggested that he was loved because he protected the weak from rival gangs, Tim Chaney said “On a pie chart. I would say that was maybe 20% of why he was loved. The main thing was that he promoted the ‘hood. Madd Ronnie loved the ‘hood. This was his home. And he loved it and the people here. That was the biggest difference between Madd and many other people from here. To so many others, it was like a purgatory. A place to make some money and move on. To Ronnie, all of it was a place he loved.”

At the court hearing for the 2003 injunction against the Rollin’ 60s by then city attorney Rockard J. Delgadillo – which made it illegal for two or more to congregate – Madd Ronnie was one of the few who showed up in court to protested to the judge. “Where are my rights to be in my own neighborhood? Why can’t I talk to people in my own neighborhood?”

Chaney tells of one time when the two of them were at a fruit stand near Magic Mountain and Ronnie bought a bag of grapefruits. They came back to the ‘hood. “Ronnie saw an old man sitting alone on a porch and just gave him the bag and they started talking. It was Small Town, USA right there.”

The first thing Big Cat told me about him, after talking about his scowl, was how he was a fist fighter.  “He was devastating. He was fearless. What he detested more than anything was the guys who would go to the gun. Who would not fight and just start shooting. He detested those guys.” 

And that’s who killed him.

That his life was ended in a manner he had long detested, well, maybe it was meant to be. It could prolong his legacy in the Hyde Park neighborhood and maybe beyond if that word is spread and it just becomes common knowledge that shooting someone is simply not cool. It is cowardly,

In the April, 5, 1998 Times article I mentioned up top, part of it included this from Big Cat.

“The killing’s been going on since before you were born. We’ve got to try and show homies how to live, not die.”

Doucette said older gang members need to be at the next meeting.

“A lot of the older guys are no longer actually banging, but they’re like politicians now ordering the young foot soldiers to do the killing,” Doucette said. “We need to get them to the table.”

A quarter century later, even with the tremendous efforts of many, the city of Los Angeles still has many open seats at that table.

 

MICHELIN NAMES MARTINA BARTOLOZZI #1 CULINARY TRAVEL ADVISOR IN ITALY

BY JIMMY DOLAN  8/12/2023

For those of you planning a trip to Italy - if it’s your first time or 20th  - you might want to give Martina Bartolozzi a heads up.

She can make your trip not only fascinating but make it taste better. Simple as that. Today, the Florence native was named the best “Culinary Travel Advisor” in all of Italy by the Michelin Guide. 

Bartolozzi, whose Instagram account, “Momento Martina” has over 11 million followers, has, according to Michelin, the “unique talent to make one’s culinary adventure memorable, exciting and utterly delicious.”

Martina, whose mother Kim is the long-time wife of the renowned butcher of Chianti, the legend Dario Cecchini, said she was honored to win the prestigious award.

“It’s a thrill and I will be inspired even more to make people’s culinary dreams come true,” Martina said.

A rival, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said “It’s not fair. Martina knows too many people.”

 

 

 

CLEAMON "BIG EVIL" JOHNSON COULD PAROLE IN “A FEW MONTHS” AFTER TAKING A DEAL

A former gang leader once described by an FBI agent and several LAPD homicide detectives as one of the deadliest men in Los Angeles could be paroled in a few months after he pled “no contest” to a murder and was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison.

Thing is Cleamon Johnson, much better - and fearfully - known on the streets as “Big Evil” has already done more than 28 years behind bars for this killing so he could be eligible for parole soon. All added up, including “good time”, Johnson was credited with 13,388 days in custody, more than 36 and a half years. As part of the deal with the Los Angeles District Attorney’s office, four other murder charges and one attempted murder charge were dropped.

Cleamon has for years said “Cleamon Johnson can get parole. Big Evil can’t.” He told me about four or five years ago that “I’m Cleamon Johnson. I am not Big Evil anymore.”

His lead attorney, Robert M. Sanger, who took on Johnson’s case while he was on Death Row in San Quentin more than 18 years ago, said his client was a changed man. “He was a very nice child with two loving parents and he’s a very nice man now. It was those years in in that neighborhood that made him who he was.”

“That neighborhood” was just north of Watts in Green Meadows, and was the domain of the 89 Family Bloods, a gang of about 50 members who were surrounded on three sides by three large Crip gangs - Kitchen Crips, East Coast Crips and Avalon Gardens Crips - who had more than a thousand members, During “those years’, the 1980s and 90s, it was among the most dangerous neighborhoods in America.

Johnson was sentenced to death on Sept. 30, 1997 for ordering the killings of Peyton Beroit - the murder he pled to Wednesday - and Donald Ray Loggins who were at a car wash on Aug. 5, 1991 near his home on 88th Street west of Central Avenue. Johnson, and the man who allegedly did the killing, Michael “Fat Rat” Allen, were sent to Death Row at San Quentin.

About 13 years later, the California Superme Court overturned the decision because they ruled the judge in the case, Charles Horan, had wrongly dimissed a juror who was leaning toward acquittal.

Johnson was let out of San Quentin, but not freed, He was sent to Los Angeles County Men’s Central Jail in January 2012 to face a retrial. While he was there, he was charged with three more murder cases and one attempted murder, all from the early 1990s. His co-defendant Allen died in custody last year of a heart disease, He was 49.

In court Wednesday, several times Judge Curtis B. Rappe and Deputy District Attorney Amy Murphy asked Johnson if he understood what was going on. He answered the same every time, “Yes, I do.”

There’s a whole, whole, whole lot more to this man’s story and I’ll get to it.

RONALD "KARTOON" ANTWINE CLEANING OUT HIS BAD BOY BOX

(This was published in the Los Angeles Times’ Opinion page on April, 29, 2023)

Can a man really change? Or more precisely, can an absolute badass change? A violent, brutal, reckless, drunk, defend-the-’hood-at-all-costs gang member? A Folsom Prison “graduate”? A 6-foot-4, 240-pound defender of Nickerson Gardens, menace to Imperial Courts and Jordan Downs? Can that guy become just about the kindest guy you ever met?

Yes, he can. Last week, I went to the funeral of Ronald “Kartoon” Antwine, a man who did just that.

Kartoon would have turned 64 just days after his “celebration of life” at Macedonia Baptist Church in Watts, two blocks from where he’d grown up and still lived on Monitor Avenue near 113th, across the street from Watts Serenity Park.

Forty years ago, the acre-sized, triangle-shaped park was the last place you would have called serene. It was a dump, a trash-filled no man’s land where high weeds hid gang snipers, an emblem of the abandonment of Watts.

Back then, you would have found Antwine — fearsome — patrolling Monitor Avenue in a long, black leather jacket and carrying a sawed-off shotgun. His street was the eastern front in the war between the Bounty Hunter Bloods, headquartered in Nickerson Gardens, and their deadly rivals, the PJ Crips of Imperial Courts and the Grape Street Crips of Jordan Downs.

Antwine’s address destined him for the Bounty Hunters. Early on, when boys from Nickerson Gardens banged on his door to get him to come outside to play, he begged off in favor of watching cartoons; he was too embarrassed to admit he was doing his homework. But soon enough, “Kartoon” was all in. (Bloods loathe the letter “C” because it symbolizes the Crips, which explains Antwine’s street name.)

Assault and robbery convictions sent him to prison in the early 1980s. When he got out in 1992, the Watts gang peace treaty was in force, and Antwine, sober, embraced his second chance passionately. At his funeral, the overflow crowd — about 700 people — was packed with mourners who told me he inspired them to change for the better.

Via video, Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Los Angeles) spoke lovingly of Kartoon’s efforts to help Watts itself change for the better too. In 2014, Antwine was the star of the groundbreaking for Serenity Park. It was a hard-fought victory, the opening move in transforming that derelict and dangerous and unserene battleground into an oasis.

Kartoon had tirelessly rallied Monitor Avenue, with help from the Trust for Public Lands, to fend off a developer — and City Hall — so the neighborhood could lay claim to some open space for kids, grown-ups and greenery in park-poor Watts.

“Today I make amends to you,” said Kartoon, as he spoke before a cheering crowd of 150 at the ceremony. “I helped destroy this neighborhood. I was a gang member. I was a drug seller. But, this is my amends. This is not my park. This is our park.”

I met Kartoon almost 30 years ago, when he was not long out of Folsom. We became friends and stayed that way.

His circle encompassed a big swath of Los Angeles. He had the neighborhood, he had politicians, he had Hollywood friends from his years working as a location scout for TV shows and movies. As a member of International Brotherhood of Teamsters Local 399, he shepherded shows such as “NCIS: Los Angeles” and “Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.” into neighborhoods that wouldn’t have welcomed the crew without his efforts.

Several years ago, Antwine suffered a stroke that slowed him down but left his will and mind in strong shape. He seemed to have even more energy and drive on behalf of Watts, on returning it to “when Watts was Watts,” when neighbors looked after neighbors.

I saw Kartoon at his home on Monitor three days before he landed in the hospital, where he died of heart failure.

I had been helping him with some writing, but I’d missed a few sessions. He called me lazy, with an added unprintable noun. Now whenever there’s something I need to do that I’m inclined to put off, I hear Kartoon’s voice, magically, calling me a lazy so-and-so, and I get on with the task.

That goes for this: Let’s organize and lobby City Hall — the way Kartoon would — to persuade L.A. to change the name of Watts Serenity Park to Ronald “Kartoon” Antwine Park. Or just Kartoon Park.

It’s not just my idea. His best friend, Greg Brown, put it out at the funeral. Now it needs amplification.

On Monitor Avenue, kids slide down slides and swing on swings that are there only because Antwine put them there. Families who once traveled miles to find a place for a birthday party gather at the picnic tables. There’s a skate park, workout stations, a lawn and trees.

Watts Serenity Park isn’t a bad name, but Kartoon Park is better. Ronald “Kartoon” Antwine Park would stand for children’s swings and grass and a lot more. It would stand for transformation itself, for growing up rough and feared and turning out smooth and loved.

Kartoon never forgot the bad things he did in his life. He extols on his transformation in Espisode 3 of the 2023 PBS documentary “10 Days In Watts”. “I truly believe every time I do something good God erases one of those X’s out of my bad boy boxes.”

Don Ball and the 50-Yard-Dash at Peary Junior High Schooi

On a fine Spring day in 1969, a hard-to-believe 54 years ago, a gym coach at Peary Junior High School in Gardena had a sudden idea; find out who is the fastest runner at school. And a 50-yard-dash would decide who that was.  There was a lull of activity in the gym area - the track, the handball courts, the baseball fields - so Coach Hines, who once held the American record for indoor pole vault, called everyone together and had the fastest guys in school line up near the chain link fence that borders 162nd Street and where the 50-yard-dash would start.

 I forgot all who were in that line up. I’m sure Guy Askins was there, and Humphrey Dodson, and Ronald Williams. Probably Mike Miller and Cornelius Bailey.  Stevie Maranon was in that line up. And I know that Don Ball was in there, too.

Ball, my closest friend then and for the next 54 years, stood out. I’m trying to think of what he stood out like. Way more than a sore thumb. Don Ball stood out more than just about anything I had ever seen. Here were eight Black guys. Stevie Maranon, who was, I think, Filipino. And Don Ball, the whitest red-haired guy I have ever known.

 I’m was not even sure why Coach Hines let Ball  run.

 Anyway. I am at the finish line with Hines and many others. And it’s a “On your mark”.

 “Get set.”

 “Go.”

After maybe 15, 20 yard I am stunned the Ball is even in the running. He’s close to the lead.  Somewhere, like at about 30 yards, I find feel as if my eyes are playing tricks on me because it is clear Don Ball is in the lead!

 At 40 yards, he is in the lead.

And at the 50 yard finish line,,,,, the winner is…….. DON BALL!!!

 I’m not the only one stunned. Everyone, the runners and their friends, are kinda silent. Finally, Coach Hines makes it official and yells out “The winner is Don Ball.”

Man, Don and I talked about that for the next 54 years. I didn’t see him all that much, a few times a year at best. But we talked maybe once a month or so.  He had moved away to Oregon and recently back to Utah where his family was from. But whenever I did see him – and most of the times I even talked on the phone with Ball – we would eventually talk about the 50 yard dash.  And if I saw him and there was somebody else there, I would tell that story.

 Ball loved that story, as he should. And I loved to tell it.

 Two months ago, I had called Ball two times to tell him I needed some of the Mexican honey he was selling. For more than a year, my girlfriend, a chef, had been using Don’s honey at her restaurant.  I wanted some for a gift. I left two messages and didn’t hear back. I left a third message which was basically “Hey Ball, I’m starting to worry about you. Call me back.”

A few weeks ago, I checked some messages on Instagram, something I rarely do. I had one Don Ball’s ex-wife Mollie and one from his brother David. Both said to call them.  They had bad news about Don.

Damnit. Damnit to hell, as Ball would often say. Don had a heart attack and was found dead at his place in Utah. That is very hard to type.

 I found my 9th grade Peary Jr. High yearbook, Polaris 1969. This is part of what Don Ball wrote.  “I appreciate your mom putting up with me during the time I’ve known you. So I’ll say goodbye saying you’re the best friend in the world”.

 I wish I could see Ball’s yearbook and see what I wrote. I like to think I called him the best friend in the world, too.

Hey, Ball, wherever you are, I know your telling that story about the time at Peary Junior High School in Gardena when you won the 50-yard dash.