She had some money on her, and had found her way to a little open-air hot dog stand, near the corner of Selma and Vine, walking distance from her new home, and right across from the Brown Derby. She ordered the cheapest thing on the menu for her lunch. It was a tiny place, wrapped with a three-sided counter, with stools surrounding it, and a juke box in the corner. It was right in the middle of everything! It was owned by a bi-racial couple, a tall, bleached blond lady, and her tall black man. Very shortly after, they changed the name to Soul-Taco. She asked them for a job, and got it on the spot. She worked 10 to 14 hours a day, seven days a week, for $65.00 a week, under the table. She figured it was a fair trade since she had no ID and in those days, it was a crime to be a runaway from home.
They made the best hot pastrami sandwiches, you could ever hope to get a bite of. Juicy, sweet, soft and cooked right there in front of you. To this day, she has never had one better! The grill was right up against the counter she waited, facing the customers, and she could take orders, cook and chat, all at the same time. She was happy to be there. The kitchen was in the back, behind a wall. She ran it all. Taking orders, cooking food, making good old fashioned thick shakes and malts, doing the dishes and checking in deliveries. But it was cool. Hollywood in the summer, in the city, rock and roll blasting from the juke box, the constant parade of people, and it was the summer of love! She had her first job ever. Awesome! What was funny, was that her dad had worked in Hollywood as a child actor and her mother had waited on a counter at Schwabs, on Sunset, decades before. It had a homey feel for her. Like she belonged. It was as close to home as she could get right then and there.
Soon, word got back to her friends in Ventura, that she had a place to stay and a job. They came looking for her. Later, she would be amused to find out that the cops in her home town, considered her to be a ring leader, leading others to run away from home, offering them her insight on survival skills on the streets. What a joke! She was no leader. She was just a survivor. If others came to her, then let them come. But then again, they did not get jobs and they got picked up by the cops, on a regular basis, because they would steal, lie and cheat. So, they did not really follow anything, but their own foolish ways, in her eyes, if you asked her.
She remembers with sadness, the friend who came to stay for a while. Her name was Debbie. She was two years younger, and was one of her funniest friends. And that made a total of three Debbies living in the commune. It was funny when people called asked to speak to Debbie. The standard answer was, "Debbie with the short red hair, Debbie with the long brown hair, or Debbie the Blond?" The Blond Debbie and Debbie with the long brown hair, had a lot of adventures together, on the road. Now here they were together in Hollywood. Debbie came to visit her one day, at the lunch stand, but she got bored and told her she was gonna take off. It was after dark, and she said, "Come on Deb, wait till I get off. I'll walk home with you." Debbie never had much patience. So she told her to shut up, she was not her mother, and she was taking off. Debbie said she would see her later at the house. So, she finished her shift without another thought for her wayward friend, except for, what a bitch and pain in the ass she could be sometimes…
Later when she got off work, she walked home alone. It was a long walk after 10 PM, because that's when the streets did get a little weird. It was after curfew, so she had to watch for the "good, bad and the ugly", as she put it, on her way home. And then she had to make sure she did not give the cops any reason to stop her either. When she got home, she found Debbie, red faced from crying, her clothes and hair an utter mess. She asked her friend, what happened, why all the tears?
Debbie said that on her walk home, she had gotten lazy and careless. She had accepted a ride from some guys. Instead of taking her home, they had taken her up into the hills of North Hollywood and raped her. Each and everyone of them. All she could think of, was that she had told her friend not to go home alone. So, now what? Debbie was in pain, they were runaways, and she thought back to when she was also 15 years old, and a runaway, and had been raped by a junkie in Santa Paula. She didn't ever report it. She had been raised to think that everything that happened to her, was somehow, her fault. And her heart ached for her younger friend. "Don't worry." she told Debbie, "Tomorrow We'll go to the free clinic and have you checked out." And she went in search of something to help her friend get to sleep for the night. Thinking back now, it was odd how each of them accepted that this sort of thing just happens. Did Debbie feel worthless too? What kept them from going for help. Did having to go home when they were in trouble seem so much worse than getting them own selves out of trouble?
About the Author: Deborah Coss, has been writing since 8 years old, getting published off and on since 15, and finally realized her child hood dream, of carrying press credentials, working for http://www.womanmotorist.com A diverse writer, publishing several business type sites, she now publishes her own site, http://www.1kindthing.com, creates some fine arts, and loves photography, commenting she is a social portraiture photographer and prefers the medium of black and white. In art, she has a very constructionist attitude, and enjoys making masks, and other 3 dimensional objects. On a personal side, she survived an extremly violent childhood, some serious trauma, including being crushed by a car at age 3 and half. Thus, her site 1kindthing.com, tells of overcoming hardships, in her many styles of writing. She is a baby boomer, raised in Southern California, bi-lingual in Spanish, descened from French, German, English and American Indian bloodlines. Coss finds words fun, and communication an art. |
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