Monterey’s Legendary “Queen of Cannery Row”
A celebration of life!
Remembrances of Kalisa Moore
(January 31st 1926 – October 14th 2009)
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Welcome!
This is a place for all of us to share our stories and experiences with Kalisa.
Add your entries in the new comment field below; let us know who you are and when your recollections took place. Be sure to “click” on the “submit comment” button when you are finished.
An icon of Cannery Row has graduated but the memories of her life and spirit live on in our hearts.
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March 27, 2013 at 1:41 am
pg2109
Warning:
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March 27, 2013 at 1:40 am
pg2109
Warning:
There is no Dr. Nathan Kisper, Dr. Mike Henderson, Dr. Smith Williams, Dr. Sedney Carey, Dr. Mac Donnald, Dr. Bryan Vance etc.. Only the big scammers hiding behind these names. Unfortunately I am the one of their victims. Be careful and don’t trust them and in any of their “stories”!!!
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Regards -Lemuel
January 11, 2013 at 1:05 am
Mrs Rhoda
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December 16, 2012 at 8:52 pm
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April 23, 2012 at 7:36 am
rhymewriter@hotmail.com
OTHER SIDE RIVER: OWED TO A DEAD POET
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I don’t make it a point generally to keep up with the musings of
counter-culture hack-writers such as yourself, Pat Nolan. But as fate
would have it, I came across your mid-life-crisis-diatribe
“Monterey:Exile’s Return” that you wrote almost twenty years ago. A
Little brief in your depiction of the Monterey Peninsula…were’nt
you?: Not to worry; I filled in the blanks between the lines myself.
I’ve walked the same streets, beaches, tracks, and sat within the
“lichened granite rocks” at Lover’s Point in Pacific Grove. I also
lived above the former Wing Chong Market (of Steinbeck Novels Reknown)
that you inhabited not long before I did….amidst the poets,
novelists, junkies, and drunks—all of us there seemingly by way of
self-imposed exile…more turned-on that we were tuned-in, and, like
Dylan, creating our own Depression. “Good Ol’ Roy” (known by you as
“King”) was certainly a landlord of distinction, not unrivaled by the
Proprietor of the La Ida Cafe, Kalisa Moore. The stench of sardines had
already been replaced by the odors of incense and sandalwood oil. Good
Ol’ Roy wallowed in self-absorption, not unlike yourself during your
sojourn to to the Monterey Peninsula…a middle-aged drunk who always
thought that America’s very survival fully depended upon General
McCarthur’s aborted mandate to bomb Manchuria. As regards
Kalisa….well, that’s another story.
I also filled in the blanks for the Bull’s Eye Tavern, The Bitter Seeds
Rock Band, and John Smithback–failed author of a dead novel: The
Lonely Dark. I was a bartender at that infamous watering hole, the
Bull’s Eye Tavern during and after the Monterey Pop Festival of ’67. I
remember you as a patron of said bar, mingling with the rock musicians
and the underground artists/literati. You usually came in with your
first wife, Fiona….Remember Fiona…of course you do! You won the
contest according to Ken Beach…i.e. the one between you, Ken, and
John Heshmati ( the Iranian whore-monger…recently dead from AIDS in
Bisbee, AZ [good riddance!!]..he couldn’t stay away from the whores in
Naco and Aqua Prieta, it seems). Yes, Pat…you won the “right of the
senior”…the first rights to ruin a fifteen year old
Woodstock-bohemian teeny-bopper. Congratulations….You the Man! And
just what is Fiona for you now? Just so much “fodder for the literary
machine.” I would that you had rather ended up with Regina Fletcher,
her sister….that Gorgon-Hyena would have chewed you up and spit you
out in a New York Second! That would have been poetic justice, to say
the least.
You are one helluva self-absorbed, egotistic sonofabitch, Pat……and
a lousy poet to boot. I saw you as a sycophant always trying to claw
you way up the bohemian social ladder. You were rejected by Dan Hulfers
and his merry band of artsy-craftsy dope dealing acid-heads, though,
weren’t you? Musta hurt! Finally reached a point, however, where you
could “name-drop” in many of your scripts. You mentioned Diane Di Palma
in your “Bolinas sketch.” You are not unlike her in that regard…she
once boasted (off the subject ) at a Poetry Slam that she had f*cked
Jack Kerouac the same day that she had met him. You’re all wannabe
“starfuckers”…….more fodder for the literary machine, I suppose.
For the most part, Monterey rejected you and a truck-load of other
hacks. Your ill-fated journey to New York by thumb…with Fiona and
your baby Brian sick with colic, in tow must have been a major defeat
in your early beginnings. So, what did you do? Got yourself another
hippie nymph, another kid, a welfare check, and a HUD house near the
Russian River. Monte Rio must have been the smaller pond to your bigger
frog. The Lower Russian River communities are perfect for the likes of
you. Kindly give my regards to all the burned-out hippies,
crop-growers, and the white-powder crowd of immigrants who, like you,
came here to cash-in on the Great American social service abundance.
Your neck of the Redwoods was Richard Brautigan’s undoing. Richard
Brautigan…..your mentor in poetic license! Let him be your mentor in
solutions to a life of pain as well. Buy yourself a .44 magnum…save
on ammunition….you’ll only need one bullet! By the By, what ever
happened to the prototype for Brautigan’s “Confederate General From Big
Sur?” And his girl friend, Kathy Testa, the one that could have played
the role of the beach gypsy in Felinni’s “8 1/2?” This all makes me
recall Ray Pearson, Tom Burleson, and the night Dan Hulfers and Tom
kicked in the door to an 8th street house in Pacific Grove where Ken
Beach and Diane Buby were spending the night….proceeding to date rape
Junkie- Janice and her roomate. It wasn’t long thereafter that Ken lost
his wife to Jack Hulfers who ruined her with too many kids and a bad
heroin habit….tsk, tsk. This revolution was never televised! Just
another forgotten soap opera of minor proportions….write a poem about
it!
What will you be to your children, Pat? Diane Di Prima’s daughter
(after a self-imposed exile in a chickencoop in Mendocino) once
commented to a Rolling Stone Magazine interviewer that the real heroes
at her family house were the drug dealers…they, at least bought
Christmas presents for the kids…and who were the poets for her? They
were “those icky guys in the corner with foam at the edge of their
mouths!” Looked in the mirror lately, Pat? Alan Ginsberg was once
furious at his former friend, Norman Podheretz and taunted him: “We’ll
get you through your children, Norman!” Norman had the last laugh in
that regard but Alan did get you, Pat. And Me? I’m the guy you warned
your children about………..not for any reason other than to slander
one you envied and despised. Thus you caused me some anguish when I
lived for the better part of a year along the Russian River. I’m more
resilent than you must have taken me to be. And all those older
faces…left over from their previous low-life existence in the
Monterey Peninsula (Michelle Alling comes to mind for one)…seeking
new salvation in the Redwoods….how pathetic they seemed. Same old
vindictive ploys….Sally Higgins surely must have been their mentor.
As you must know at this point, I am a firm believer in “la revancha.”
This response is my attempt to give you a taste of your own shit.
Perhaps you’ve already changed by now….after all, you were “so much
older then…you’re younger than that now.” I understand, Pat….I was
a victim of Bob Dylan’s music as well……no more, no less than
Richard Farina was a victim of Willy Hines’ Motorcycle mania—-write a
poem about that for the late Mimi Baez Farina….use the Tanka
format…collaborate with a better poet than yourself…Leza Lowitz.
Better still, get an enema from her sister, Dr. Robin
Lowitz-Hoffman-Edwards, et al at the Southwest Health Clinic in Santa
Rosa. Tell her I sent you…for a discount and free genital exam
included.
As for the women who loved you and who ( you think ) still do: What
your wife, Gail, confided to Bob Divale would blow your ass away ( you
might not need that .44 after all ). “Don’t tell Pat what I told you,”
said Bob…….so I guess I won’t. As for Fiona….did I mention
Fiona?? ask Michael Leibert, ask the Irish Guy with the big dick, ask
me….hell, ask the entire 7th Fleet….you remember those sailors in
S. F., docha, Pat? Fiona said you did. But, then again, I never
believed even half of what she said about you…or Sally Higgins for
that matter. If it helps, her father ruined her long before you did.
Marxism and molestation…..the ultimate mind and body f*ck! We pay a
handsome price for those “first rights” wrongfully obtained….perhaps
it’s our dowry payment. Mona should have told her “to stay away from
the train lines” ( but she was so much older then…she’s younger than
that now).
I once hoped that someone ( of your ilk ) would kick your ass down
River Road from Monte Rio all the way to the Coffee Bazaar on Old
Armstrong Woods Road in Guerneville….where you might spend your last
moments listening to the inane ( albeit boastful ) anecdotes of the
pin-head descendents of baby-boom-era hippies. I’ve lightened up since
then and would much prefer to ship you ( 4th Class Postage ) in a black
box back to Montreal ( you’re not as Irish as Fiona would have had us
believe, it seems ). Hey, why not make that decision for yourself! When
that French Canuk, Jack Kerouac, couldn’t get it up anymore and finally
realized that his life had been a futile venture in playing with his
own shit….what did he do???….He went back to his working class
roots….home to Mamma, who, it turns out, was right after all about
Alan Ginsberg, Neil Cassady, and the rest of the “dead-beat”
generation. Perhaps the most noteworthy writing that Alan Ginsberg
should be remembered for occured when he signed the necessary documents
required by the State of New York to perform a Lobotomy on his mother.
The best poem that YOU ever wrote was “Fiona.” I wrote one for Mona and
Regina….but the Federal Government forbids me to post it on the
internet or read it out loud in public….except in Santa Cruz….the
feds have given up on Santa Cruz! Betcha I could read it at Tillie
Gort’s Cafe or maybe even on KFOG radio in San Francisco….Rosalie
Howarth would love to wallow in “schadenfreude”……just like you and
yours do.
This hand, having writ, shall now move on. I close with a quote
(source=Sally Higgins, the reincarnation of Pacific Grove’s Elmarie
Dyke) from Leonard’s wife, Linda, to Sally just before she slammed the
phone: “GET A JOB!”
March 2, 2012 at 10:04 pm
Scott William Gergen
Kalisa was a big-hearted lady and what a character she was. It was a joy working for her in my youth
October 28, 2011 at 12:36 pm
Peter L. Steiner
I was so sad to hear of Kalisa’s passing. I had last seen her in 1999, bringing my young daughters and my wife to meet the legend. She said she was trying to collect letters and reminiscences for a possible book. On a wintry Minnesota day several years later, I composed a letter, but alas, I never sent it. RIP, Kalisa, laugh with God. Here are excerpts from the unsent letter…
During this 100th year after Steinbeck’s death, I am finally getting around to writing the letter I’d promised to send. I was one of the thousands who went through the Army Language School at the Presidio, and one of the many who occasionally sought refuge behind the pale gold walls of your restaurant. With the Vietnam War still raging, and our individual fates uncertain, Kalisa’s was a sheltering bohemian cocoon in the madness of those times.
When I returned to California in the summer of ’99 with my family to revisit old haunts, Monterey had changed so dramatically over three decades, and Cannery Row was now filled with condos and trinket shops, even a Steinbeck Plaza that I suspect he would have sneered at. The old funkiness, the palpable sense of history was mostly gone, having succumbed to the American propensity to convert every historical site into a theme park with no real connection to its roots.
I didn’t know what to expect as we meandered farther down toward the end of Cannery Row, where in my mind, that magical place called Kalisa’s still existed. Would it be a McDonald’s now? An Olive Garden?
But no, I was ecstatic to find it, just as I remembered it, the Spanish-style structure washed by the midmorning sun. As we ventured inside, it was a bit more ramshackle, not organized like the restaurant where Henry Miller or Clint Eastwood would hang out. There were still photographs of the famous hanging on the walls, but tables and chairs were arranged in somewhat random fashion, and the bar was gone. The windows had advertised the place as an ice cream parlour, and when I looked in the back, there you were, on the phone, still so very recognizable, as if you’d just stepped out of the pages of a novel. You served us ice cream, we all sat down and talked.
You were okay with all the development, you were in fact President of the Cannery Row Development Association. You said it had been a struggle to keep the restaurant going while you were caring for a son who eventually died of AIDS. You said you were hoping to gather letters from all the people who had loved you and your restaurant since you first arrived in 1957 at the age of 29.
I was first brought to Kalisa’s in 1970 by Rich — I don’t even remember his last name now. So often you simply lose track of people who temporarily light up your existence in the transient life of the military. But Rich, handsome and in love with poetry, moonlighted as one of your waiters. He told us about the famous ones you’d sometimes see there. And sure enough, one afternoon, when the restaurant was quite empty, alone in the front corner by the window, in an elegant black dress and wide-brimmed hat that covered most of her face in shadow, sat a mysterious but obviously beautiful woman. It was Kim Novak.
Of course, none of us had the cojones to approach the goddess. And then she was gone, and we would never again have the chance to encounter her. Other recollections are refracted in time, but I remember how we limited-budget servicemen loved the soup. There was the rumour, perhaps told to me by Rich, that once you got behind the curtain that separated the dining room from the kitchen, you would scrape the leftovers from all the plates into a great kettle of soup to simmer, and that’s why it was so good. I may or may not have doubted the story at the time, but I supposed you had learned frugality growing up impoverished in Russia, and why throw good food away?
You said Henry Miller considered you one of his favorite people, and why not? You always seemed to have stepped right out of the pages of someone’s novel! Thanks so much for offering us Kalisa’s, the place where a sheltered boy from the Midwest began to appreciate the charms of a bohemian life.
July 10, 2011 at 7:30 am
N. Wolansky
I worked at Kalisa’s restaurant in the 70′s, while attending the Monterey Institutue. What a great lady she was! We shared lots of laughs, and our hatred of Russians, as Kalisa was Latvian and I’m Ukrainian! She has had such a fantastic life living in Monterey all those years! The stories I heard!
June 11, 2011 at 8:22 am
Christina Ivazes
Wow! As I research my own family history, I decided to look up Kalisa and have become entranced by her story. My own mother Roanne Lindquist was one of the “down of their luck” people that Kalisa helped way back in 1958 when she was pregnant with me. When I found this out, I visited Kalisa in Monterey and didn’t think I would find her, but did to my surprise, behind an ice cream counter at the original Kalisa’s location. She was gracious and shared a few things with me about that era. Evidently, my mother was back East at the time and pregnant. She probably wanted to return to California where her family was from but did not want to remove herself from the jazz scene she had become so enamored with. She talked a piano player into driving West to California to this place called Kalisa’s in Monterey. My mother hitched a ride, Kalisa let her live in the basement and Kalisa told me she (Kalisa) fell in love with the piano player. She said he ended up a heroin addict that moved up North (can’t remember if it was to Oregon or Washington). She said she had 5 children. I thought at the time that she had 5 children by the piano player, but obviously not by what I have read online this past day.
SO, the mystery of my own life that connects to Kalisa is that my mother died when she was 35 and I never found out who my real father is. I am tracing backwards and really want to find out the name of that piano player so I can find out who the musicians were back East in New York that he may have played with. I know my mother was hanging out in upstate New York around Stan Getz at the time as well, but I need some other names. I have a name of James Jordan (can’t be black because I am as white as they come along with my kids and grandkids). If anyone knows anything, please contact me at grannypants.wordpress.com and comment on a post.
It truly is amazing how far reaching Kalisa has been to so many. How ironic she helped to maintain Steinbeck’s legacy when her own seems to be even richer.
Thank you for the opportunity on this blog to honor Kalisa Moore!
Christina Ivazes
May 5, 2011 at 3:35 pm
R. Bailey
The Old Row is gone..But the memories will live forever.
Kalisa’s was a place of mystery and intrepid, exotic nostalgia. Growing up on the Monterey Peninsula as a young boy and being fascinated with the ‘lore’ on Cannery Row Kalisa’s added another dimension of intrigue, excitement and yearning. Cannery Rows was a hang out for all sorts and ages, at all times in its esoteric forever living history. It denied no one. It had something for everyone. It gave and it took at will. Never to be broken or destroyed, no matter what the new ages of entrepreneurial greed and hustle besieged it with. For the spirits of ‘The Row’ live through the spirits of long ago dead and the people of today who protect it and keep it dear in their hearts….
The smell of candy corn from the Carousel Edgewater Packing Co. to the (long gone) Kung Pow Prawns from Willie Lums China Row, to the beautiful reek of booze spilling out of Sly McFlys. The salty mist of thesea and the scent of decaying seaweed, to the faint bellows of the fog horn at Point Pinos Light House. ‘The Row’ was and is alive. Breathing the spirit that lives within us all.
I met Kalisa when I believe I was 12 years old in the early 80′s. My parents and my good friends parents (owner of the History Company, M. K. Hemp) used go and watch the Dancing Show while me and (D. Hemp) skate boarded around ‘The Row’ doing things most young kids of the day did. The door man at Kalisa’s would let us in the last half hour of the show to find our parents upstairs and have a soda. This was where I witnessed the exotic ladies of the dance and met Kalisa where she looked into my eyes with a gaze of a seer and told me I would go wonderful places and do good things for the world. It was a truly inspiring moment in my life for the memories still live with me to this very day.
There is a magic, and that magic was created by Kalisa. Who gave to ‘The Row’ her energy, art, inspiration, divinity and unconditional love……..
I am sorry to hear of her passing. But Heaven regained one of their Angels that they had let the earth experience even for a brief time…….
R. Bailey
April 28, 2011 at 10:02 am
Ann Smeal
I am very saddened to hear of Kalisa’s passing. My daughter Hannah is her granddaughter, I guess no one knew to inform us.
March 25, 2011 at 10:09 pm
Anonymous
The related videos of La Ida Cafe, Christmas with Kalisa and Kalisa’s Cabaret were video taped by Maya Mattar (amayavideoproduction@gmail.com)
March 25, 2011 at 9:50 pm
Anonymous
I remember kalisa was promised a plaque on the side of la Idas, where she spent fifty years of her life, at the time when her restaurant was sold. I watched that old lady, many times, hobble with her walker to see if had been put up yet. I watched her heart sink when the plaque that got put up there was about la Ida and not the plaque promised to her, but with her so famous optimism she said,”Well at least la Ida is on it.” The friends of Kalisa Committee and I would like to know what happened and when the promos will be kept? Thank you Michael for seeing this though, Kalisa’s friend, Maya
January 7, 2011 at 2:19 pm
Harriet Bird Berman
I found Kalisa’s at a time of crisis in my life. I needed a safe place to find out what my future might look like. At the age of 44, for the first time in my life, I was on my own. I had taken possession of my “self”, and I just wanted to sing my songs. I don’t remember the order of things. I just remember that Kalisa took me under her wing. When my singing partner, Ed Soren, and I came to her ready to perform, she encouraged us and gave us Tuesday evenings to entertain. We played our guitars and sang all the wonderful music of the 60′s. We drew a following. Our pay was food, drinks and tips. It was a magical time for me, and I remain deeply grateful for the care and protection offered to me by this gruff, eccentric woman with a heart of gold. Kalisa was, indeed the Queen… one of a kind… a treasure that will be missed by all who knew her.
August 22, 2010 at 2:17 pm
Leilani Jones
There was a boats work off of the water called Monterey Boat Works. I was also fortunate enough to be given a lot of the old, hand made tools that went into making a Monterey hull fishing boat. One of the boat makers also had a ton of stuff from Rickets lab and I ended up with all of that. I consider the old Cannery Row one of the best memories of my life. I am now writing another novel about a mystery located there.
August 22, 2010 at 2:09 pm
Leilani Jones
I met the queen when I was about 16 yrs. old. I had been kicked out of home and got a job packing squid at Hovden’s cannery. One of the old women there had been a young lady of the night and a good friend of Steinbecks. kalisa would let me eat free when I needed to and later on when I became a singer at Capone’s Warehouse owned by Dick O’Kane, I would go to her place and now pay to eat. She had the bed in the dining room at the time and one night I did my first acid trip and she had to put me on the bed until I came down a bit.
Got lucky and was given all these amazing letters to my squid packing friend from Steinbeck and Doc Ricketts. Pretty amazing letters and I think folks would be surprised to see how many ladies of Steinbecks time were working packing squid on the row in the sixties.
August 12, 2010 at 11:59 am
Lady Hull
Kalisa ia all around me every day in my studio…bits of ” this and that “…The wreath from our dancer’s memorial @ Paper Wing Theatre…Costume pieces she wore for events…Photos and fliers tacked up here and there…She is still an active part of Cannery Row life every day, if you knew her…you cannot pass the old white gates at the back of the ‘cafe’ on the bike path without a tug at the heart and a whispered “Thank you, Kalisa “!!! You gave us a time and a place to be the bohemians of Cannery Row…that we miss the most of all ! XOXOX Lady Hull
December 2, 2009 at 10:21 am
Rob Morgan
I am so sorry to learn of Kalisa’s passing.
We visited Kalisa’s in 2005 when we were touring California and Arizona and while in Cannery Row we visited.
I am a long-time admirer of John Steinbeck and his writing and while it was great to see Cannery Row much had obviously changed since Steinbeck’s days – the one thing that really kept him alive to some extent was Kalisa and talking to her about him and of the occasion she had met him.
A wonderful woman with a nice line in amiable eccentricity, she really was one of the highlights of our trip.
Rob – Cockenzie, Scotland
November 26, 2009 at 10:29 am
Jean Stallings
For a while Kalisa didn’t have a car, so she invited me to drive her to some events. I met many exciting people through Kalisa. She joined Spirit of Speech, International Training in Communication, and always was a high bidder for many of the auction items at our annual holiday party. Several of us celebrated birthday parties upstairs at Kalisa’s. The entire Monterey area will certainly miss this marvelous legend!
November 16, 2009 at 2:23 pm
William ("Bill") Minor
Remembrances of Kalisa Moore
My name is Bill Minor. I became an habitué at Kalisa’s from the time I arrived to teach at MPC in 1971 on. I shared piano chores with other fine practitioners (Alan Berman among them), and even accompanied Michael Parks (of “Then Came Bronson” fame) one night when he dropped in and sang. I published a short story called “The Duke and the Dauphin” in the Kansas Quarterly in 1987—a story about two con artist musicians who showed up to play, pretending to be Harry James and Charlie Spivak. I wasn’t sure what Kalisa would think of the piece, so I changed the name of her place to “Boryana’s Café.” She loved the story, and portions of it were included in a very fine article that Steve Turner wrote about Kalisa, called “The Last Character on Cannery Row,” published in West magazine in 1989.
Richard Mayer, who played flute at Kalisa’s in the 60s (while studying Russian at DLI) and I were privileged—honored—to be a part of the Wave Street Studios/Livenetworks.tv “Memories of Cannery Row with Kalsa Moore” series, sharing reminiscence with her on the February 19th, 2009 program. I would like now, by way of written homage, to post the first two pages of “The Duke and the Dauphin,” for I think (I hope!) they catch the flavor of what it was like to enter the magic “space” of Kalisa’s in those days, or what I described as parting “the glass beads that admit one to this Casablanca close-to-home,” never knowing quite what to expect or what you might find on any given night.
The color of Boryana’s Cafe in Cannery Row is outrageous, like the place itself. It’s canary on a bender, mustard gone riotous, ocher seeking revenge. It’s the moldy pewter yolk of a very old egg. And that’s just the outside.
The inside is catalyst for a Victorian wet dream.
The walls are stained mauve bed sheets. Dripped glass chandeliers, over-sized mirrors, bulbous rosewood framing assault one everywhere. The ceiling–a collage of gold leaf, filigree cherubs and old newspapers–is about to collapse, and the clientele–carnival primped or tourist posh–sometimes (mostly about three in the morning) look that way too. The owner?
She’s an institution, larger than the place itself, commanding. sometimes even accommodating. If she likes you you’re treated like a long-lost son or lover. If she doesn’t, the reception is as dour as dour can be. I have been received both ways, and on the same evening.
Boryana has, or had, an open piano. She attracts some fine practitioners, and some not so fine. I may fall into that last category but, after several years of deserved silence (I used to play professionally) and much discontent with my current job (I won’t go into that but, believe me, it’s discontent), I found myself nibbling away at her ivories one night, to the applause of some Japanese tourists whose delight either spoke of their state of intoxication or their lack of familiarity with jazz–America’s one art. But I was having fun, and fun is mostly what people have at Boryana’s, an institution run on principles as close to anarchy as any paying operation can be.
I played a couple more times after that night. I used up what songs I could remember from dance band days–”These Foolish Things,” “You Are Too Beautiful,” “I Can’t Get Started”–but the attempts must not have displeased the Cafe’s matron. She kept inviting me back and even once (while arguing with a dishwasher who claimed he hadn’t been paid in three months) gave me a free fish salad. It was an elaborate thing in which, among the green stuff, selected herbs and delicious dressing, secret pieces of ling cod and squid were lodged. I closed the place up with a friend that night. Plus a fresh aggregate of Japanese tourists, a guitar player named Sam (who did all the old Cisco Houston, Woody Guthrie stuff I love) and Boryana’s daughter, an unsmiling but stately female apparition.
Stumbling out into the California Pacific dawn, across the street from the sullen wood lab where Doc once wooed Suzy in Steinbeck’s Sweet Thursday–and resisting the urge to pee beside the parked orange hearse that Boryana drives to garage sales–I felt I’d just found a welcome home away from home. I looked forward to returning, and the opportunity came sooner than expected. Two days later I received an urgent phone call. It was Boryana.
“Harry James and Charlie Spivak are living in Sand City,” she said. “Right behind K-Mart.”
“You’re kidding,” I said. “The Harry James? The Charlie Spivak?”
“Nobody else but,” she said. “And they’re coming to my place Saturday night, to play.”
“I’ll be there,” I said.
“You better be,” she said. “Or you’ll miss it.”
I’d come to expect such tough logic from the matriarch so, when she hung up, I scrawled the date down on my calendar. Harry James? Charlie Spivak? They were two of my favorite big band greats. But what the hell were they doing in Monterey? And behind K-Mart no less! However, Boryana’s not the sort of person you doubt for a second. She’s an odd magic sort who runs an odd magic sort of place that makes you want to believe, again, in just about anything. People came to Boryana’s for some of the same reasons that others go to church: to credit what you would not credit elsewhere–such as the appearance of two legendary musicians. The cafe itself, its wild decor, made this possible, but so did the proprietor. She was a substantial gypsy with the glint of many night fires in her eyes–eyes that, when they fixed you, as they often did, commanded allegiance. They suggested that she’d seen her share of magic and that, if you hung around long enough, you would too. Maybe it’s the thick Bulgarian accent, maybe it’s just her size, but when she told me that James and Spivak were living behind K-Mart, I accepted it. Besides, I’d known too many up-and-down, here-today-and-gone-tomorrow, on-the-skids and quick-to-recover musicians. It came with the territory. It was part of the trade–a trade in which, whatever the catalyst (booze or drugs or the wrong kind of mate), nothing was less surprising than the sudden fall.
I’d also been raised, as a kid, on a steady diet of “downfall” classics–films such as Words and Music and Young Man with a Horn. In short, I am a sucker for self-destruction. I knew the price a fine musician could pay for providing others with incessant pleasure, not because I was a fine musician myself but because I had frequently been so provided. I knew those rare notes never came easy–that they were too often accompanied by self-neglect or even self-abuse. After all, I’d seen Kirk Douglas hit the skids as the young Bix Beiderbecke. I’d seen Mickey Rooney, portraying Larry Hart, go stumbling about in the rain. In such a world, little could make more sense than the swan song. the daily demise, of two more jazz greats. I decided to be on hand at Boryana’s to see it …
[And I did--and much more over the years! Thanks, again and again, Kalisa!]
November 15, 2009 at 8:49 pm
Michael Hemp
She was one of a kind and those of us lucky enough to have her in our lives will never forget the “Queen of Cannery Row”—and how much more than even that she really was. The Old Row is now officially over.
I look forward so seeing all of you, her friends, Wednesday night at the Monterey Bay Aquarium. For more info go to: http://www.CanneryRow.org