American Boomer

By Steve Fisher

OK, Boomer… this is the book you’ve been waiting for! A memoir by one of your own, about your time and tribulations, which will take you down memory lane and may even remind you of yourself as a child of the Greatest Generation.

As a front-line baby boomer, Steve Fisher was a youngster in the 1950s and came of age in the turbulent 1960s. Never one to stay within the proscribed parameters and never too big on rules, he followed his own path and made choices that were, unfortunately, often to his own detriment. American Boomer traces the highs and lows of his exceptional journey, including his time as a musician, a radio disc-jockey, and ultimately, a writer. Funny and poignant, uplifting and heart-breaking, American Boomer is a hard and honest look at a son of the Greatest Generation who didn’t die before he got old.

If you’re a baby boomer, much of the vernacular in this book will be familiar to you. If you’re a younger reader… that’s why there’s Google.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Release date: Sep 15, 2023
• ISBN: 9798889105091

Steve Fisher

Over the course of his life as a baby boomer, Steve Fisher has been a musician, a radio disc jockey, and a record producer before finding his true path as a writer. He is the author of the humorous animal classic, The World Is Your Litter Box. He lives in Studio City, CA, with his wife, Judy, and their three cats.

Book preview

American Boomer

The Journey of a Mid-Century Boy

Who Didn’t Die Before He Got Old

Steve Fisher

Austin Macauley Publishers

American Boomer

About the Author

Dedication

Copyright Information ©

Acknowledgment

Prologue

The Oasis

Record Kid

Baseball, Penny Candy & the Jew Baiters

Dancing School

Dad

Mom

Canada

Brother Jeff

Swimming Naked

Brownies

Portals to Music

Valerie

Telegraph Avenue

Europe on $5 a Day

Radio Days

New Kid in LA

Wilderness Years

Wifey Wifey

Book Deal

Helping Ray Wind Down

Epilogue

About the Author

Over the course of his life as a baby boomer, Steve Fisher has been a musician, a radio disc jockey, and a record producer before finding his true path as a writer. He is the author of the humorous animal classic, The World Is Your Litter Box. He lives in Studio City, CA, with his wife, Judy, and their three cats.

Dedication

Dedicated to Judy Graff Fisher

Thanks, Wifey Wifey, for your undying love and support.

Copyright Information ©

Steve Fisher 2023

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher.

Any person who commits any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

All of the events in this memoir are true to the best of the author’s memory. The views expressed in this memoir are solely those of the author.

Ordering Information

Quantity sales: Special discounts are available on quantity purchases by corporations, associations, and others. For details, contact the publisher at the address below.

Publisher’s Cataloging-in-Publication data

Fisher, Steve

American Boomer

ISBN 9798886937770 (Paperback)

ISBN 9798889105091 (ePub e-book)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2023912413

www.austinmacauley.com/us

First Published 2023

Austin Macauley Publishers LLC

40 Wall Street, 33rd Floor, Suite 3302

New York, NY 10005

USA

[e-mail]

[phone]

Acknowledgment

Heartfelt thanks to the following friends and family members who have provided encouragement and support throughout my writing career and during the writing of this book: Paula Allen, Abby Sue Fisher, Charlie and Madeleine Dobronte, Jerry Miller, John Strawway, Mark Chaplin, Jennifer Williams, Scott Holderman, Joan Renner, Karen Fisher, Esterly Blum, Edna Grenoble, John Wilmer, Ray Bauman, Sydney and Marcus Cooper, Brian Irving, Dayna Cussler, Josh, Mac and Fiona Campbell, Kathryn Soler Beer, Warren Beer, Tom Allard, and Chris Zerbe.

Prologue

In Los Angeles, where I live, especially in the summer months when the temperatures are sizzling, it’s not unusual to have unhealthy air quality alerts. During these alerts, elderly people and individuals with asthma or other lung conditions are advised to stay indoors. When I was a young man, I cavalierly pooh-poohed unhealthy air quality alerts. What’s a little dirty air in LA, I thought, the city that once had smog so bad, you could barely see across the street? I was youthful, I didn’t have asthma or any other breathing problems, so as far as I was concerned, the alerts did not pertain to me.

Recently, we had an unhealthy air quality alert, only this time, when it got to the elderly people part, I was jolted by the realization, Oh, my God! They’re talking about me.

Same thing with smoking. Before I quit, I was a heavy smoker, so heavy in fact that I smoked unfiltered Camel cigarettes. When people said, You know, each cigarette you smoke cuts fifteen minutes off your life, I laughed it off and said, I’ll worry about that when I’m old.

Well, now I am old, and I am worried about that.

Yes, it’s true. The thing I never thought would happen to me has happened… I’ve become an old man. I don’t feel old, and I don’t really act old, but the sad fact is, I am old. This wasn’t supposed to happen to me! I was supposed to be the only human in history to stay young forever.

I’m sure just about everyone who has survived long enough to be called a senior citizen has had similar thoughts when they realized that their younger years had imperceptibly slipped away. Like me, they were probably told by an elder to appreciate their youth because it goes by fast, and like me, they probably said something like, Yeah, okay. George Bernard Shaw had it right when he said, Youth is wasted on the young.

When I was around nineteen or twenty, I genuinely thought I had it all figured out. I hated when older people said words to the effect of, You’ll understand when you’re older, or Wait until you’ve had more experience. Pshaw, I thought. I didn’t need to wait until I was older or until I acquired more seasoning. I already knew all the answers. I would be a successful musician making a ton of money, I would marry my girlfriend, Shelly Dunning, and we would live happily ever after.

Boy, was I wrong.

What I’ve learned over the years is that life is a tumultuous journey full of unanticipated bumps and detours, and that fairness and justice often have very little to do with how things actually turn out. Most of my life lessons have been learned the hard way, and many of the difficulties I encountered were of my own making. I was insufferably cocky and full of myself and didn’t want to listen to anyone who saw things differently. Still, I aimed high and managed to achieve a degree of success as a musician, a radio disc jockey and a record producer before I found my true path as a writer.

As a front-line baby boomer, I was born shortly after World War II to a man and woman of the Greatest Generation, who like so many of their peers, had become part of the burgeoning middle class. Being a Michigan boy, I was infused with good Midwestern values such as honesty, common courtesy and respect for elders. I was taught to be self-sufficient, to use good judgment, and to stand up for what I believed. Millions of other baby boomers were raised with the same values.

I was a child in the cold war era of the 1950s and came of age in the turbulent 1960s. I bounced through the ’70s, ’80s, and ’90s, and eventually found my way into the new millennium relatively unscathed. It’s been quite a ride.

From my current perspective, I realize I’ve had a blessed life. Yes, I crashed and burned more than once, but I was fortunate to do many exciting things that most people don’t get to do. I certainly haven’t been cheated.

American Boomer was written during the pandemic lockdown of 2020. The stories herein are evocative of the years I have lived as a baby boomer, and while not intended to be a comprehensive exploration of my life, this book hits the highlights, warts and all. Out of respect for privacy, and to prevent unpleasant lawsuits, many of the names have been changed.

If you’re an elder like me, the eras covered in this book and most of the vernacular will be familiar to you. If you’re a younger reader and some of this material seems foreign to you… that’s why God invented Google. Regardless of your age, I think you’ll enjoy this book and maybe even find little snippets of yourself in its pages.

The Oasis

The Oasis was located in Menlo Park, California, just across the border from Palo Alto. It opened in 1937 as a beer and burger hangout for Stanford students, but over the years, it became beloved by just about everyone who ever lived on the southern part of the San Francisco Peninsula. I went there throughout my life, starting when I was in junior high and continuing until that horrible day when it closed for good.

The Oasis, fondly known to locals as the O was housed in a two-story building that, at one time, had been either a barn or a stable. Inside, it had dark wooden walls with booths along two sides and several large round tables in the middle. The tables and booths in the Oasis were also made of wood and carved up with initials, some of which dated back to the late 1930s. At that time, patrons were encouraged to carve their initials in the tables and on the walls of the booths, and the tradition continued for years.

At the time I started going to the Oasis, Palo Alto was essentially a verdant college town with book stores and cafes held over from the beatnik era. The O was a relic of an earlier time, a casual, unpretentious place where almost anyone could feel at home. The majority of the customers were working-class men who quietly nursed their beers, and Stanford students, who typically flooded the place in the early evening and often stayed until the O closed at 2:00 in the morning. By closing time, all the tables would be covered with peanut shells, beer glasses, empty pitchers and plastic baskets with the leftover detritus of the Oasis’ simple but tasty cuisine. Rivulets of spilled beer mixed in with the sawdust and peanut shells on the floor.

In the early days, the O had a foosball table near the booths and four or five pinball machines against the opposite wall. There was an old-time popcorn machine and a standing heater that threw off a lot of heat and cozied the place up during the winter. A weathered wooden bar sat near the entryway with nine or ten stools, and there was a tall wooden counter across from the bar that had a few more seats. A black-and-white TV hung in the corner above the bar and was tuned to whichever sport was in season at the time. Over the years, I watched numerous San Francisco Giants games at the Oasis. The walls above the bar were festooned with neon beer signs and posters advertising Pabst Blue Ribbon, Miller High Life, Budweiser, and many of the other working man’s beers of the era.

The menu at the Oasis was spartan… mainly just hamburgers, cheeseburgers, hot dogs, and a sausage called an LA Hot. Early on, LA Hots and hamburgers were $0.45, cheeseburgers were $0.50, and the hot dogs went for $0.35. The burgers, despite having the same lettuce, onion and tomato common to burgers around the world, were unique and diner-style delicious. Perhaps it was the decades of grease on the grill that gave them their distinctive taste, or maybe it was simply the ambiance of the O. Regardless, they tasted exactly the same over the years. The only thing that changed was the price.

LA Hots were unique to the Oasis and they were not for sissies. They were spicy to the degree that you definitely needed something cold close by to extinguish the flames. It was years before I learned that LA stood not for Los Angeles but for Louisiana, hence the life-threatening temperature. Whenever I went to the O, I typically ordered a cheeseburger and an LA Hot, and I always ate the burger first. If I ate the LA Hot first, my taste buds would be so ravaged that I wouldn’t have been able to taste the burger.

The first time I went to the Oasis was with my mother, my brothers Mike and Jeff, and my sister Abby. It was 1961, and we had moved to Palo Alto from Illinois just a few months earlier. Mom had landed an administrative job in the drama department at Stanford, and one of the students told her about the O.

When we got to the Oasis, we were greeted by a daunting sign that read, Must Be 21 Or Older. We kids pulled up short, afraid they wouldn’t let us in, but Mom assured us that as long as we were with her, we would be alright. So, in we went, out of the bright sunshine and into the darkened confines of the O. A few of the men at the bar turned to check out Mom as she walked past. No one paid any attention to us kids. On that first visit, we sat in one of the booths and were amazed by all the carvings. We ordered burgers, and as advertised, they were the best ever.

On our second visit, I decided to be bold and go for an LA Hot. It practically took the top of my head off. Fortunately, I had an ice-cold Coke close at hand. Despite being fiery, LA Hots were special. Over the years, I probably ate hundreds of burgers and LA Hots at the Oasis.

Once I was in high school and could drive, I often went to the Oasis with Chuck Flanders, Jerry Miller and Lee Hendrickson. Chuck was a Stanford student, while Lee, Jerry and I were classmates at Palo Alto High. Now that we were big kids, the formidable 21 or Over sign was much more applicable to us. One particular Oasis employee was a scowling, ill-tempered man who always wore a blue work shirt and clearly didn’t want us to be there. If he was the only one around when we came in, he would not allow us stay. When that happened, we cursed him to Hell for depriving us of O burgers and LA Hots. Fortunately, most of the other employees were more lenient and let us come in, but we had to sit at the counter across from the bar so they could watch us and make sure we didn’t drink any beer. If no one was paying any attention to us, we snuck into one of the booths. We didn’t want to get the Oasis in any trouble, so we never tried to drink beer while we were underage. The O was a special place and we wanted to keep it that way.

On a howling, rainy night, the Oasis was a warm and comfortable place to be, a proverbial shelter from the storm. Whenever possible, I sat at one of the center tables with my back to the heater, which had the feel of a wood fireplace. Through the few windows, I could see the rain pounding against the glass and wind-blown branches thrashing around in a fury. I couldn’t actually hear the storm, which was drowned out by the normal Oasis hubbub, but I could imagine what it sounded like and was glad to be in the snugness of the O, where I always felt sheltered and safe.

I loved to look at the carvings, especially if I could sit in a booth and really study them. The carvings included fraternity insignias, nicknames, and occasionally, an off-color word. But by far, the majority of the carvings were initials of long-ago boyfriends and girlfriends. Many of the initials had roughly hewn hearts around them. The Oasis was like a time capsule, bearing the initials of thousands of souls that at one time or another, had come into the O for a burger and a beer.

One night, I was sitting in a booth and the carving, SD + JG 1940 was at eye level just to my left. I assumed SD was the man, because back then, men were always first. But who were they? What did they like to do? Who did they admire? Did SD fight in World War II? Did SD and JG marry and raise a family, or did they eventually go their own separate ways? What were their lives like in 1940, when they sat in a booth at the Oasis, the same booth I was sitting in, and carved their initials into the wood?

Shortly after graduation from high school, Jerry Miller and I moved into an apartment in San Francisco, just up the hill from Chinatown. Whenever I drove down to Palo Alto to see the family, I always made sure to include a visit to the O. The food tasted exactly the same, but over time, the prices had gone up. The burgers and LA Hots went from $0.45 to a shocking $0.65, the cheeseburgers skyrocketed to a wallet-busting $0.75, and the hot dogs, which hardly anyone ever ordered, were $0.50. Even at the increased prices, the food and the ambience were well worth it.

The day I turned 21, Chuck and Jerry took me to the Oasis for my first legal drink. I could think of no better place to have it. We breezed past the once-forbidding 21 and Over sign and walked inside. I bellied up to the bar and said, Bottle of Bud, please.

The bartender reached into the refrigerator and pulled out a beer.

Hey, I said. Aren’t you gonna ask me for my ID?

The guy looked at me like I was crazy. OK, sure, he said, humoring me.

I proudly handed him my driver’s license. He studied it and realized it was my 21st birthday. He handed me the beer and said, This one’s on the house.

Shortly thereafter, I got the dreaded Greetings letter from the draft board. Before I turned 21, I had a medical deferment because of my weak left eye. But the Vietnam War was raging and they needed bodies, so my deferment was canceled, and I became a soldier.

I was sent to Fort Campbell, Kentucky for boot camp. It was a cold, gray world and completely alien to me. Like just about every other trainee, I was homesick and lonely. I missed my friends and family terribly, and I would have killed for an LA Hot at the Oasis. After around four months, I was examined by a sympathetic doctor, who was shocked that I had been inducted with a bad left eye. He wrote me up for a medical discharge and they sent me home.

Upon my return, I resumed my music career as a guitar player and songwriter. By this time, Jerry had joined me on bass and we were starting to get some attention. If we were playing a gig in the vicinity of the Oasis, we always stopped in afterward for O burgers and beer.

In 1971, my brother Jeff cleared the 21-age hurdle and whenever I was in town, I went to the Oasis with him. Jeff had become a regular at the O. Miller High Life was his beer of choice.

Eventually, my music career, which once held so much promise, sputtered to a halt. I decided to go to Europe and travel around while I figured out what to do next. At the time, Europe was not as tourist-friendly as it later became, and very few people spoke English. Within a couple months, I began to feel isolated and alone, and consequently, I often thought about home. In Salzburg, Austria, I spent a lot of time in a beer garden, which had old wooden tables and reminded me of the Oasis, although there was not a burger or an LA Hot in sight.

When I got back home, I wangled my way into radio and spent a couple years as a disc jockey at a pop station in San Francisco. From there, I formed a radio syndication company with another ex-disc jockey and we produced programs for album-rock radio stations. This led me into record production, which was something I had always intended to do.

Throughout this period, I continued to go to the Oasis with Jeff, who was now married with a young daughter. By then, the O had an outside patio with wooden picnic tables. It was a nice addition and blended in seamlessly with the ambience inside. In pleasant weather, Jeff and I would sit on the patio and soak up some sun while we drank beer and ate our burgers and LA Hots. The inside of the O continued to look the same, although the burgers, LA Hots and hot dogs had broken the one-dollar price barrier and would continue to climb. Once in a while, we would see some of our fellow Paly High graduates who, like me, always went to the O when they were in town.

As the seventies started to wind down, I became a pinball addict at the O. For a while, Chuck Flanders and I played a machine called the Casanova. It was reasonably hard, but we quickly learned its quirks and usually managed to win some games. I always got a bottle of Bud and placed it on the glass top in front of me while I played. Chuck was more of a Pabst guy.

Eventually a new pinball machine called Gorgar arrived at the Oasis. Gorgar was much more difficult than the Casanova, and sometimes, it could be very frustrating. On more than one occasion, I wanted to heave my beer bottle into Gorgar’s beeping and flashing guts, but I always restrained myself. From time to time, Gorgar took mercy on me and let me win a few games.

My career as a record producer got off to a good start. I produced a stripped-down rock album that became somewhat of a cult classic. On the strength of that record, I was hired by a few other local bands to produce demo tapes.

Ultimately, I decided to move to Los Angeles, which was the beating heart of the record industry and promised many more opportunities. Having recently gone through my latest scuffling period, I needed to make some money for the trip. The manager at the Oasis, Seth Ferguson, who had become a friend, told me I could work there for a few weeks.

On my first day of work at the O, I met several of the other employees in the parking lot right before the place was to open for the day. We smoked a joint and got a nice buzz.

Working at the O provided me with a behind-the-scenes look at the inner workings of the place, and it was an interesting perspective. For much of my time there, I worked behind the bar. Essentially, all I had to do was keep the beers coming, wash the glasses and pitchers, and occasionally go around and clear off the tables. I thoroughly enjoyed my brief tenure at the O, and when my time was over, I had earned around $300 with tips. It was with that money that I drove to Los Angeles to begin the next phase.

While living in LA, I came up to the Bay Area a couple times a year to visit the family. I always stayed with Jeff, his wife Karen, and his young daughter, Sydney. In addition to going to the Oasis, which was a given, my visits always included a stop at Wessex Books, which was an exceptional used book store, and a stop at the Boulangerie on Santa Cruz Avenue for a baguette to nosh on later.

Jeff teased me mercilessly about my hard and fast routine. Once, after picking me up at the airport, he told Karen and Sydney, Well, we’ve been to the Oasis and gone by Wessex. Now, if we just drop by the Boulangerie, I can take Steve right back to the airport.

In the early 1990s, Palo Alto changed, and so did the Oasis. With the advent of the digital age, what had been largely a quiet college town turned supersonic as it became the focal point of Silicon Valley. Palo Alto and the neighboring towns teemed with young people who were making a ton of money at Facebook, Google, and all the other tech companies that literally sprang up overnight. One by one, many of the old familiar places around town were leveled and replaced by unremarkable buildings that were utile, but had no soul or sense of history. There was so much construction, it became hard to remember what had been there before. On University Avenue in downtown Palo Alto, stores like Ace Hardware and Western Auto gave way to trendy boutiques and restaurants geared toward the newly minted millionaires who had seemingly overrun the city.

The Oasis escaped the wrecking ball, but in keeping with shifting tastes, several changes were made. There were still O burgers and LA Hots, but the menu was augmented with items such as pizza, tuna melts and, horror of horrors, salads. Ordinary beers such as Pabst and Miller were shunted aside to make way for Heineken, Corona, and other imported beers that were twice as expensive. Stanford students still frequented the O, but the blue-collar element had completely disappeared. Many of the current patrons were families with young children.

The ambiance of the O remained essentially the same, but some adjustments were inevitable. The booths were still there, but the tables had been laminated, imprisoning the decades-old carvings like insects in amber. The pinball machines had been replaced with digital arcade-type games. A color TV hung above the bar where the old black-and-white set had been. The foosball table, the popcorn machine and the cozy stand-up heater were long gone. And, of course, the prices skyrocketed. The burgers and LA Hots that had once cost $0.45 were now pushing five dollars apiece.

Still, the Oasis was one of the few places that remained from my youth in Palo Alto, and I continued to go there when I came to town, primarily with Jeff. Whenever possible, we tried to sit in one of the booths, which apart from the laminated tables, still looked the same as they always did. Occasionally, we sat in the booth with the SD + JG 1940 carving on the wall. We groused about the changes like a couple old men, but eventually, we got used to them. The Oasis was still a special place, and the burgers and LA hots, despite the sharp price increase, were as good as ever.

Then, I got the news I never thought I’d hear. The Oasis was closing. Because it had survived for so many years while other businesses had come and gone, the news came as a complete shock. But the land it occupied was probably worth ten times what it had been worth before the Silicon Valley onslaught, and I fully expected the O to be torn down for yet another nondescript new building.

Yet two years after the Oasis closed, the building still stood, although the neon Oasis sign was gone and the property was surrounded by a chain link fence. On one of my family visits, I drove over to see it for myself. I parked the car, walked up to the fence and peered in. The building looked exactly the same, almost as if it was waiting for customers to show up. I couldn’t help but wonder if the wooden tables and booths were still inside, still bearing the initials carved so long ago. I could picture the O the way it was, with sawdust on the floor and beer glasses on the tables, and I could almost taste the burgers and LA Hots. Seeing the O abandoned and lifeless broke my heart. Finally, I had to turn away. It was almost as if an old friend had died.

The Oasis was a beacon for me. I went there when my family was new to Palo Alto, and I continued going there throughout my high school years, my adulthood, and finally, as I began to grow old. I had my share of triumphs and difficulties in life, but the one thing I could always count on over all those years was the familiarity and solace of the O.

And, of course, the burgers and LA Hots.

Record Kid

1958. Highland Park, Illinois. I was in the fifth grade, pedaling my Schwinn home from school. I could see the fins of the Cadillac sticking out of our driveway from a block away, and I immediately began thinking about which two 45 RPM records I would buy at Lishon’s Record Shop.

The fins of the Cadillac meant that my grandmother Cecille had come up from Chicago to visit her daughter and her grandchildren. When grandma came to see us, two good things happened. First, she always brought corned beef, pastrami and, not that any of us kids would eat it… tongue. She also brought lox, bagels and cream cheese, pickled herring and gefilte fish. An orgy of delicious Jewish deli food that kept us going for a week.

But the best part of my grandmother’s visit was that she always gave my brothers and my sister and I two dollars each. At the time, 45s cost $0.89 apiece, so to me, that meant two 45s