Chapter Thirty
Austin was an important time of self discovery in my life because I was on my own financially for the first time ever.
I had always had the curse of the Baby Boom -a trust fund; and, thus, had always had something to fall back on.
There was always a check coming.
When I was 14 the a.m. started me off with a checking account of $300 a month at Preston State Bank in Dallas. I even had my own MasterCharge credit card, as they were called then.
At 14!
Sadly, I've never had a valid concept of money. Money was there to be spent. I'd never been taught to handle it, earn it, save it, or worry about it. I'd just been shown how to spend it.
Most often it was spent on tokens of affection from the a.m.: "Here. See how much I love you? Here's this thing. This proves how much I love you. See?"
If I needed money I asked for it. If I didn't get it I waited and asked again later. I always got it.
Lesson: Don’t take “No” for an answer.
I was spoiled. But I wasn’t rotten.
When I was given the checking account I started doing what I loved to do best: eat out.
My usual restaurant was Phil’s Delicatessen in Preston Center...one of, if not the, first shopping center complexes in Texas. Neiman Marcus opened its first branch location there.
Phil's was run by Phil Miller and his wife Sarah. They were Jewish but their deli was Kosher style: you could order sausages with your blintzes if you liked.
Phil's son, Lenny, had trouble with the law and “spent time in prison for drugs”, the a.m. told me.
He got out and would work alongside his -as only the a.m. could put it- “long suffering parents”.
Phil had a framed photo of Lenny and he standing side by side, arms around each other's waists, hanging on the wall so I knew what he looked like.
When I first saw him in person I had expected this horrible drug-addicted, prison hardened creature; but I found a kindly, sad looking man whose demeanor belied his history.
He was always kind to me, as were his parents.
I love delicatessen food. Phil's had two sandwiches I ate regularly: the NO.4 and the NO.6.
The former was corned beef and the latter was pastrami. Each were sumptious triple deckers on rye; generously built with swiss cheese, cole slaw, turkey and Russian dressing. There was always a little paper cup of fresh mustard-based potato salad and the obligatory slice of pickle.
To die for.
On Tuesdays they made lentil soup. No one makes lentil soup the way Phil's did.
My love of the lentil came early in life.
The Thanksgiving Holidays, and sometimes Christmas, at my house always included a generous helping of Gramma's hand made "lensen und spaetzle".
It took hours for her to make the spaetzle dough out of eggs and flour and major measures of her own brand of loving magic.
She'd plop a big dollop of dough on a cutting board balanced on the edge of a cauldron of boiling water; and, with the majestic sweeps of a master chef, she'd start a back and forth motion with her spatula that would chop off just the right amount of dough and then roll it, either with her palm or the tool (she was so fast I could never make out which), into the boiling water below. This would cook up to the plumpest most delicious elongated finger sized dumplings you've ever eaten in your life.
She'd serve them with what seemed like gallons of a sauce she made from lentils and would add frankfurters if you wanted.
I never got enough of that dish and I always over ate it when she made it.
It was so filling you couldn't eat too much and have room left over for turkey and pie and stuffing and all the other goodies that came with Thanksgiving dinner. There was always plenty left over the next day and somehow the flavor of the spaetzle and the lentil gravy/sauce blended to make a more luscious second and third meal.
Although I never took to matzo ball soup, I have plenty of kreplach running through my veins: enough to make me honorary Jewish I like to think.
Lesson: We are, indeed, what we eat.
I do have an affinity for Jews and their religion. Gramma was a holocaust refugee and although she didn't practice her religion openly in our house it was a definite presence. We lived in a growing Jewish community in North Dallas and an equal mix of my childhood playmates were Jewish.
I had a natural interest in their religion and was always asking about Jesus and their lack of belief in his kinship to God and they'd tell me they believed he lived; just that he wasn't the Messiah they were waiting for.
A little of it rubbed off.
I was never made to go to church as a child. I went a little bit but never felt comfortable in the atmosphere.
I went primarily to the Methodist church and heard most of the bible stories in Sunday school, when I attended. I always felt church people were putting on a act of some sort.
My suspicions were confirmed at my first communion.
I'd been told that we were given bread and wine to symbolize the body and blood of Christ. It was a highly holy thing to do, I was told, and I should be proud I was going.
The a.m. explained there would be a little glass of wine and a wafer given to me by the pastor.
I’d tasted wine and wasn’t looking forward to it.
On this particular Sunday it was a special communion for little kids -I was 5 or 6- and we were brought up row by row to the alter to kneel and receive the Eucharist.
When it came to be my turn the wafer was placed on my tongue and I lifted the tiny cup of wine to drink as I'd been told.
"It's Welch's Grape Juice! ! !", I screamed for all to know.
This was a major hoodwinking! We'd been duped.
The blood of Christ was supposed to be wine, not Welch's, and I wanted the world to know we little kids had been ripped off. I remonstrated and fussed about it all the way back to my pew.
Lesson: One man’s blood is another’s grape juice.
To this day I believe in Jesus as a man. I believe he may have been who he is said to have been: the son of God, but I have deeper and further beliefs about the subject.
I have no doubt about the existence of God.
He and I get along fine.
It's the scam artistry of some in the name of religion that bother's me to this day.
Unfortunately, although we talk constantly, I've not been given any idea about what to do about it by our Creator, so I don't do anything.
Yet.
Anyway, from the time I was thirteen until the time I moved to Austin some 19 years later, I always had money to spend.
Now, I was in my 30's and was having to make a living for the first time in my life and it wasn't too comforting to know it wasn't as easy as it had looked when I was a youth at the a.m.’s knee: mail comes, endorse check, mail it to bank, spend, repeat monthly.
To be a great and famous actor was where my heart always lay.
A rich great and famous actor would be nice.
But I wanted to act and I'd do it for free if need be. That's the secret to actors in general: we love the craft so much we're willing to do it for free just to be able to do it.
And it can be our downfall.
Lesson: It's sometimes easier for a heroin junkie to get the next "fix" than it is for an actor to get the next role.
The great Lilly Tomlin, when asked by aspirants “How do I get into show business?” answers simply: “Do you have to?”
It's a tremendously, horrendously, stupendously difficult mental life to be an actor.
There are huge doubts all the time; the most predominant of which is "Will I ever work again?"
Actors always, literally, believe the role they've just completed is the last they'll ever play.
No amount of rationalization alleviates the stress of this little bit of paranoia. It is as persistent as "death and taxes".
But another role usually comes along.
Austin's importance in my life stemmed not only from it's personality as a city, but its population as well. It is intelligent and cognizant of the world around it and cherishes the slowed pace it has set for itself through its lifestyle.
It was a perfect city in which to have a nervous breakdown.
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