Author: feigelgoremckenzie

Although I lived in other places from 1961 to 1974, “home” was Topanga Beach in Malibu California. It was where I landed when I moved out from the Santa Monica Roberts’ family home I’d spent most of my life before then. And it was the last place I lived before moving to Aotearoa New Zealand.

During the 61-74 period I lived in three of the houses shown in this photo taken by Jeff Ort: in Evansville, Indiana for college, Santa Monica, Ocean Park, Venice, Maui, O’ahu, Costa Rica, Topanga Canyon, the Malibu Colony – even a few months in Pasadena. But I’d always return to Topanga Beach.

Having the State of California take over the beach, demolish the houses and destroy the community I’d been part of for so long was like having the Orcs destroy Hobbiton. Or like having something precious stolen and destroyed by barbarians, storm troopers or faceless, soulless bureaucrats.

So many of my most vivid memories are from Topanga Beach and I’ll be sharing them in this section as time permits.

To those of you who can remember back this far there used to be a small chain of fast food outlets – sometimes called ‘Snack Shacks’ – along the coast of “North Bay” (the northwestern section of Santa Monica Bay from Ballona Creek to Pt Mugu) owned and operated by a man named Austin Nienhauser.

From memory, one was just up from the pier at Santa Monica’s Sorrento Beach, another just up from Will Roger’s State Beach at the Lighthouse and another one up from the intersection of Pacific Coast Highway and Sunset Boulevard.

Austin and his wife Pat lived in a large, sprawling apartment above the much smaller apartment where I, and a succession on lifeguard, student-surfers lived and the slightly larger apartment across from it which was occupied by golf-pro Willie Hunter Jr.

To a young guy still in his teens – as I was at the time – Pat was an exotic, voluptuous older woman who reminded me of Elizabeth Taylor. After a few drinks she’d sometimes invite one of my roommates up to her apartment for sex and one of my roommate was a favorite, as I discovered when I walked in on them in our apartment.

On the other hand, Austin could be brutish and would sometimes pound on our door demanding to know where Pat was. Raging bull comes to mind.

One day he was so drunk he fell down the stairs from the top apartment onto the deck below and crawled, moaning and mumbling incoherently across the sand to the rocks exposed by low tide. Then, to the horror of those of us watching this spectacle he dragged himself across the rocks into the small surf. Although the seaweed cushioned some of his path I knew from experience that many of the exposed rocks were sharp and would be scraping and cutting him. So I was relieved to see him reach the surf only to be rolled over a few times by a breaking wave and start crawling his was back towards the beach.

I can’t remember what happened next. I think I turned away in order not to see any more. What seemed funny at first had become pathetic.

Naturally, the local boys had a soft spot (or should that be hard spot) for Pat and when we’d hear her crying out in pain we were concerned. Should we intervene. Should we call the sheriff? Should we turn up the stereo?

A young friend and I decided we’d send Austin a message he couldn’t ignore. My friend lived next door, so he and his family could hear all of this as well. Hell … you could hear it while walking on the lane outside or along the beach their apartment. Had it had been a dog or cat we probably wouldn’t hesitate to step in.

So my friend (I’ll call him The Backward Baseball Cap Boy until he tells me it’s OK to use his name) and I conspired to ruin Austin’s new Buick convertible by putting sugar in its gas tank. But first we stole the suitcase Austin’s girlfriend had in the back seat of her car. I can’t remember what we did with the clothes and cosmetics but we donated the high-end transistor radio to mountaineer Norman Dyhrenfurth (another story there) for his upcoming (and successful) Everest Expedition.

We Topanga Beach dwellers had become quite adept at darting and zig-zagging across the highway to George’s Market and I bought a box of sugar. That night we skulked out in the darkness, opened the lid, undid the cap and poured the contents of the box into the opening aided by a bent piece of cardboard as a sort of makeshift funnel.

We gleefully watched for Austin to arrive and leave over the next few days and absolutely nothing happened. We figured he’d be vigilant since we stole his girlfriend’s case so we were concerned that we might get caught if we put in more sugar. But need overcame caution and, this time, I bought the biggest bag of sugar in the market.

We used a real funnel and poured in the entire bag. And it worked. Over the next few days we watched as Austin’s car belched more and more smoke amidst strange clunking sound hoping to see it stop completely. Instead, he drove it away leaving a plume of dirty smoke and we never saw it again. A day or so later Austin showed up in a new car and we didn’t want to risk another sugar attack.

My friend’s mother was an amazing lady who was the first adult woman I’d ever met who treated everyone like they were intelligent enough to handle the truth. Then she always delivered these truths with a smile.

I was a total dunce when it came to cooking for myself and she patiently explained the basics, like how to boil water. She even gave me a coffee percolator so I could make myself a “decent cup of coffee instead of that instant stuff.”

One day I invited her over to have a decent cup of freshly brewed coffee and proudly poured her a mug, expecting her to complement me on my achievement. Instead she grimaced, shot over to the sink and spit it out. “What on earth have you done, Feigel?” she demanded while wiping her mouth with the back of her hand.

Confused, I handed her the jar. “INSTANT COFFEE! You used INSTANT COFFEE?” Still confused I asked, “Is there another kind?”

She broke down in laughter and said, “Oh no … I never thought you wouldn’t know the difference. Then I did have to show you how to boil water.” And that was the end of the coffee experiment.

Then I mentioned my concern about Pat and again she laughed. She knew all about it. Everyone did. So she sat me back down at the tiny kitchen table (both the table and the kitchen) and said, “Look, you have a ways to go before you know these things so I won’t go into any detail. But once you’re older and have experienced more of life you’ll understand that some people enjoy what Pat is going through … and Pat is one of them. She wants them to make her scream.”

And she was right. It wasn’t until I was older and had experienced a lot more of life’s idiosyncrasies that I understood. But I was still glad we’d ruined Austin’s car.

A POEM

Last century when I penned this I thought it was very funny. In view of later events I’m not so sure it ever was.

Fat fat the water rat.
Austin Nienhauser is fat,
And he has a wife named Pat,
Who likes to fondle this and that,
And has a dog and has a cat.

Fat fat the water rat.

EPILOGUE

Years later I was in the parking lot of a notorious club on the mauka side of the Pacific Coast Highway just up from Santa Monica Canyon. I was there to see if a friend was around that night and was walking up the front steps when the door flew open and what I assume was a bouncer was escorting a very drunk Pat out the door.

By this time she and Austin had divorced and she was living somewhere in the Pacific Palisades.

She stumbled and, as luck would have it, fell directly into my waiting arms. She threw her arms around me as the guy at the door told her not to come back until she sobered up and went back inside.

When I pushed Pat away and held onto her hands to steady her I noticed that she had the biggest Star Saphire ring I’ve ever seen – before or since. I happen to have bought a Star Sapphires and had a 10ct gem set in white gold a few years earlier. But I rarely wore it.

I reckoned the Sapphire in Pat’s ring was around 40cts if not more.

I’ve no idea whether or not Pat recognized me from the beach but she noticed me looking at her ring and offered it to me if I’d take her home and bedded her.

There’s something about the smell of stale alcohol coming from someone’s skin that really turns me off. Stale alcohol. That’s what Pat smelled like through the perfume she was wearing. Besides I’d look pretty silly wearing a Sapphire that size.

By then we were standing by her car and she was dangling her keys in front of me. So I put her in the passenger’s seat, kissed her hand and by the time I’d decided what to do next she’d passed out.

I took the keys back to the club, handed them to the bouncer and asked him to keep them until she’d sobered up or called a taxi.

Pat was one of the nine people aboard the 161 foot schooner “Goodwill” when it sunk after hitting a reef off Baja on May 25, 1969. Only two bodies were ever recovered and Pat’s wasn’t one of them.

Wherever she went from there I hope it was someplace that gave her comfort and peace.

The Nienhauser Affair © Robert R. Feigel 2022 – All Rights Reserved

When I lived there Malibu’s Topanga Beach wasn’t known as party central or a druggie’s beach. It was an eclectic, but diverse community along a stretch of beach that was home to families, couples, students, teachers, surfers, lifeguards, actors, writers, artists, musicians, builders and a variety of people who worked for the entertainment industry. It was a community in every sense of the word.

Many of the residents owned their homes on beachfront land leased from the Los Angeles Athletic Club. And for those of us, like me, who rented some of the houses, it offered a way of life we wouldn’t have been able to afford otherwise.

The house I was living in the summer of 64 was owned by a Dr Schwieiger and shared by a different people who’d come and go depending on the time of year and work or school schedules. My housemates at the time were a young married couple working on their graduate degrees and a lifeguard, while I was working at a surfing magazine.

When I first moved onto Topanga Beach it was 1961 and nobody I knew locked their doors. No need to then. Besides there seemed to be an open door policy where neighbors became friends and friends dropped in on each other. Impromptu parties were not uncommon.

By the mid-60s that had changed a bit, but that day I was standing in the kitchen making myself a sandwich when two people walked past the window and stuck their heads in the open front door.

“Hello! Anyone home?”

I set aside my sandwich and they introduced themselves when I popped out from the kitchen. “Hi, we’re your new neighbors. Well … for the summer anyway. We’ve rented the house next door.”

“Ah … the Roachs” house. Hi, I’m Bob.”

“I’m Doug and this is Sharon. We’re sharing with another couple. Jay Sebring and ….” I didn’t catch the other name but I think it was Abigail. I’d seen Doug around, but the others were strangers.

The Roachs’ house was one of the “proper” houses on the beach. A family beach home belonging to a large family that also had a big house on Adelaide Drive overlooking Santa Monica Canyon. It was only a few blocks from where I’d grown up and I’d gone to school with one of the sons. So due to the size of the house and the furnishings I figured they were paying a premium price for the summer.

“We’d like to ask a favor,” said the beautiful Sharon. I was all ears and hormones.

They explained that they’d ordered a phone connection but that it wouldn’t be turned on for a couple of weeks. Could they use our phone until it was. “We’ll pay for all the calls of course.”

Maybe things have changed, but back then just about every call made from Topanga Beach was a toll call. So when I hesitated, Doug reassured me. “Oh we know about the toll calls. The phone company is making a fortune. But we’ll reimburse you. Promise.”

“Also,” added Sharon with a heart melting smile, “could we borrow a cup of sugar?” We laughed.

The walkways along the side of each house ran next to each other and were only separated by a short fence topped with lattice in need of paint. So we’d see each other often as we came and went. We always got smiles and waves. No noise or loud music. They seemed like perfect neighbors.

A few weeks later I came home from visiting another neighbor to find Doug on the phone in our living room. He was arguing with someone on the other end and he waved me away as if to say, “I need some privacy here.” Seeing my expression he smiled, shrugged and mimed his apologies.

When I returned from my bedroom he was gone. But it did start me wondering why he was still using our phone. After all they’d been living next door for nearly a month.

One of my housemates also walked in on one or the other of them using the phone a few times and asked me to check and make sure they were going to pay for the calls because I had been the one to say it was OK to use the phone. The account was in my name but we shared he cost and paid for our own calls.

If I remember correctly the phone company was Pacific Bell and very slow to send out their bills. So when one arrived with a major increase from calls made the first week they’d been next door, I was very concerned. I waited until I knew they were home and presented them with the itemized list.

“Oh gee,” said Doug. “We’ll get onto that right away. Those aren’t my calls, but I’ll ask the others to pay you pronto.”

Pronto turned into a week or so and Sharon came over and presented me with a check. Of course we had already paid the bill so having to wait until we were in town to deposit it and then for it to clear put a strain on my finances. However, I was the one who’d said OK. At least her check didn’t bounce.

We all noticed that they’d become less friendly, but when one of my housemates found Doug McClure again having an argument on our phone he confronted him. He outright asked Doug why he was still using our phone. Doug admitted that theirs had never been connected. He blamed the phone company, but my housemate told him that he didn’t want them coming into our house or using our phone again when we weren’t there. Did they even order the connection?

We started locking the front door when we were out.

Now I didn’t know who Sharon was. Or Sebring and his pretty girlfriend. But I knew who Doug was. He was an actor and my mom and stepdad knew his parents. We didn’t have a television at the beach and I hadn’t watched one except occasionally since I left home. But I figured that since Doug was nearly a local and my parents knew his he could be trusted.

I was wrong.

A few week after they left I got a huge phone bill. They’d not only made long calls to Hollywood and Beverly Hills, they’d phoned Paris, London, Rome, New York, San Francisco and even Mexico. The bill ran into the hundreds of dollars.

I’d been able to get Doug’s number from a mutual acquaintance and talked to him several times. He was always apologetic and promised to pay the bill and never did. Finally he’d hang up when he’d recognize my voice. Then I was able to get the number at the studio where he worked and after being put through twice and getting the same runaround I was told he wouldn’t take my calls. I called is agent. He was apologetic but said, “Look … people like Doug don’t pay their bills like other people. So you’re wasting your time. He’ll never pay you.”

Over the years I’ve run into quite a few people like that who work in the industry. To them, people like me should feel fortunate to have had the opportunity to meet them and pay for the privilege. The agent ended with “Be glad you’re not his tailor.”

I must admit that being that close to Sharon Tate almost made it worth it.

Sharon Tate, Doug McClure and Jay Sebring © Robert R. Feigel 2022 – All Rights Reserved

Before Hang-Ten, Kanvas by Katin, Quiksilver, Laguna or any number of California surfwear companies there was a small, family owned business called Roy’s Cabana in the Santa Monica Canyon near State Beach.

It was started in 1952 by Roy and Dody Colburn and operated out of a building on the Southeast side of Entrada Drive down from Ted’s and a few yards from the Pacific Coast Highway.

While Roy made custom hamburgers and other food for hungry beachgoers and locals in Roy’s Cafe, Dody and her small team of machinists next door made custom beachwear for a wide variety of clients, from movie stars and volley ball players to lifeguards and surfers.

In 1952 the choice of beachwear was pretty thin unless you were able to go to Hawai’i where the choice was wider. Companies like Catalina and Janzen churned out the basic swimwear you might wear to the pool or lake. But Southern Californians were far more discerning and those who lived on or near the coast wanted to wear something that didn’t want to look like tourists.

Late-publisher, photojournalist and surfer, Marty Sugarman, coined the term “beachfront culture” to describe the unique scene that had developed on the beaches at Venice, Ocean Park, State Beach and Malibu. It was these North Bay beaches that attracted diverse and upwardly mobile groups of people involved in the entertainment industry and its offshoots.

State Beach was a particular magnet because of its position and local community of actors, musicians, writers, directors. set designers and builders, stuntmen and stuntwomen, extras, photographers and those who appreciated their company. There was room for everybody and everybody was welcome.

Like a lot of guys of my generation my first surfing trunks were just swimming trunks bought from a store in Santa Monica and they soon deteriorated. The only cutoffs I had were made from WWII Navy surplus “Duck” pants made of white canvas. I hated to ruin a pair of my favorite Duck pants but sometimes the knees would wear out or I’d stain the legs with oil or something indelible. They were very cheap and readily available for a couple of dollars at the Army-Navy surplus place on Lincoln Blvd in Santa Monica.

But cut up a pair of my old Levis? No way. I liked them used and old. They were far more comfortable that way. The older the better.

Santa Monica Canyon was in insulated little community back then. You could walk or bike around it easily. I never lived there, but I had friends who did and was planning to get myself an apartment in “the canyon” when I moved out from the family home in Santa Monica. Instead I moved even closer to the beach. In fact, right on the beach at Topanga Beach in Malibu.

A surfing friend told me about the custom made trunks from Roy’s. Parking places were hard to find on Entrada, but I found a spot past Ted’s and walked down the sandy sidewalk to the the door to Roy’s cabana. The place was far smaller than I’d imagined. No showroom or store. Just a small area with a bunch of “makes” or “scratches” on the wall with a lot of patterns. Dody would measure you like a tailor does and ask you questions like, “Are you getting them for swimming, volleyball or surfing?” “Do you need more room in the crotch”? “Blush much?” Haha!

She’d also offer you a choice of materials and explain the pros and cons of each. My first trunks were made of cotton twill. Subsequent orders were usually made either cotton twill or canvas because I liked the weight of the canvas material. But both took awhile to dry, so I always ordered two pairs so I could wear the dry one while the other dried. I learned to rinse them in clear water to get out the saltwater because the saltwater rotted the stitching first and eventually the material. I had many pairs of Roy’s custom trunks.

Once she had made a record of your measurements and sketched them on the patterns she kept on the wall for future reference you had to wait for a couple of weeks for your new, custom made or “bespoke” Roy’s trunks to be made.

When weight and therefore my waist size change she’d make small adjustments to my scratch and date them. So I never had to go through the entire measurement process again. Reordering was a breeze. The trunks always fit perfectly.

Roy’s also made distinctive club trunks and jackets for the Malibu Surfing Association and could be seen on MSA contestants in surfing contests up and down the coast. I had the trunks but put mu MSA patch on a longer, heavier coat that kept me warmer. Roy’s also made bikinis for the female members.

From the late-50s to mid-70s I only had one pair of trunks that weren’t made by Roy’s. It was a pair of nylon trunks given to me by Nancy Katin of Kanvas by Katin. I loved them because they fit me well, were comfortable while sitting on my surfboard and would dry quickly. At that stage I could only fit in short surfing sessions and even though I wore fast drying Speedos instead instead of jockey Y-fronts for my “Superman” changes from surfing to street clothes, even the Dacron blend Roy’s trunks wouldn’t be dry for the next session.

Sadly, they were lost one day after the drawstring broke on my way back from Rincon. I’d tied them to the side mirror of my VW bug so they’d be try by the time I got back to Topanga Beach where I might want to go out again. Stupid move because they would have be completely dry long before then. But the draw string snapped and they flew across the highway and lost forever.

The last pair of Roy’s trunks I got was in 1973. I was spending the summer before I left for NZ lifeguarding at the Malibu Colony. I ordered a pair of “lifeguard red” trunks with the Colony lifeguard patch sewn on. Someone stole them off the cloths line at the place I was renting and that was that.

Roy’s and Dody’s business continued to thrive for a few more years until they decided to retire. According to their son Tim, by then Roy’s Cabana had expanded to include shirts, jackets and tennis shorts and had “moved into a two-story factory the Colburns built in Santa Monica.”

Roy Colburn died in 1993 and Dody twelve years later in 2005. Their son Tom attempted to resurrect the company in 2007. Unfortunately, the attempt failed. Regardless, the legacy of this iconic family business will live on as long as it can be celebrated by those of us who respect it and are grateful for their important contribution to our “waterfront culture.”

Custom trunks from Roy’s Cabana © Robert R. Feigel 2022 – All Rights Reserved

Leonard Nimoy wasn’t acting …

I wish I could remember the exact dates because I can’t find anything on Google to confirm or support the story I’m about to tell. Maybe someone who reads it will remember the incident or have the issue of TIME Magazine that covered it.

As with so much of my life from my late-teens onwards the story starts with surfing. I’d learned to stand up on a surfboard and ride it at Little Dume, a surfing break that was part of Point Dume. So when I was still living at home in Santa Monica, working at a supermarket on Montana Avenue and going to Santa Monica High School followed by Santa Monica City College, I surfed when I could and usually locally.

Bay Street was a local break and I knew it well. Most the surfers who had “wheels” would park in the Bay Street parking lot next to what I knew as the Del Mar Club. Then the hardcore locals would hang out in the Apian Way parking lot because it was smaller, less crowded only. That’s where I parked. Besides when good surf meant skipping a class or two at Santa Monica High School, just a few blocks up the Pico hill, the teachers and coaches who’d try and bust the truants focused on the Bay Street lot.

The Del Mar club had gone through previous incarnations before it became the private beach club my mom and stepdad belonged to. It’s where my sister Mimi and I learned to swim and accompanied to the beach by club staff who’d look after us kids while our parents played. Years later I was told that there was gambling going on in private rooms and the players were some of the county’s best known celebrities, political figures and law enforcement officials. My mom and stepdad loved to gamble and would go to Las Vegas several times a year.

After my stepdad’s bankruptcy their membership lapsed and I don’t recall how the club finally succumbed to changing tastes. But by the time I start my story the Club Del Mar had been taken over by the drug addiction treatment organization known as Synanon.

On this particular day I’d parked my car in the Apian Way lot, pulled on my wetsuit, taken my board to the beach and paddled out to catch some waves. It wasn’t great surfing. Pretty average, really. But it was a chance to get wet, inhale some saltwater and work off some energy.

My vision without glasses is crap. Anything beyond the end of my outstretched hand becomes blurry. But as I left the water I could see a large gathering of people in front of what had been renamed “Synanon House.” The closer I got I could see that it was a cordon of uniformed police with riot gear.

Now this is interesting, I thought.

I asked one of the

policemen what was going on and he said they were there to make some arrests in the building and make sure nobody escaped. If the people they intended to arrest didn’t come out, they were going in after them.

Really interesting.

My old friend and former editor, Bill Cleary, had gone on to write for other publications and had told me that he was now a stringer for TIME-LIFE thanks to his mentor, Jordan Bonfante. I understood that Jordan was Los Angeles Bureau Chief for LIFE Magazine and that Bill was counting on him to help get his long awaited but constantly postponed book published.

So I got to a pay phone, called Bill and suggested that he might want to get down there and cover what might be a major story.

Bill told me he’d check with Jordan Bonfante and for me to call him back. When I did he told me that Jordan had just appointed me as a stringer for TIME-LIFE and my first assignment was to get inside the building and cover the story myself.

Writing for a surfing magazine is not the same as being a news reporter, but I did have some earlier training and subsequent experience. My senior year in high school had me taking a broadcasting course in conjunction with the Santa Monica City College FM station, KCRW-FM. Part of that training was in news reporting and the skills we’d learned played a major part of the final exam.

After the surfing magazine I’d worked as assistant editor under Bill at a publication called Young American Report and had done a lot of the research that led to us breaking the news about two major tobacco companies that had registered the names of two popular strains of marijuana: Acapulco Gold and Panama Red. The Wall Street Journal picked up our article and had given YAR credit. So, I felt ready for the challenge.

By that time I was out of my wetsuit and back in street clothes. I went back to the cordon, asked to speak to the “officer in charge,” and explained that I was on assignment to cover the story by LIFE Magazine. With hardly a glance I was allowed through the cordon.

Now what? Talk about bluffing it. I walked up to the front door. It was manned by some tough looking guys who were anything but welcoming. “What the fuck do YOU want?” They’d seen me talking to the police and probably thought I was representing them.

It’s amazing how saying you’re from a news outlet makes such a difference. I was ordered to stay in the lobby while they talked to someone else. After a fairly short wait I was taken in tow by an older man who kept a close watch on me as we climbed the stairs to the mezzanine level.

At this point I’ve got to explain that I knew very little about Synanon “except what I read in the newspapers.” I didn’t know who Chuck Dederich was and I didn’t know what they did or how they did it. It was a different world and not one I was familiar with or wanted to be. So I was going in cold.

I was motioned into a room that was buzzing with activity. People standing at the windows overlooking Pico, keeping a look at what was going on outside and barking back reports to an eclectic group of people sitting at some tables that had been put together like a boardroom.

After a brief word with one of the people who looked vaguely familiar and pointing at me, the man got up from the table, and introduced himself. “Hi, I’m Leonard Nimoy and I’m on the board of Synanon.” He motioned towards the table, “Other members of the board. This is our command center and we’re discussing war.”

It was at that point that the seriousness of this situation hit me. Armed police with riot gear surrounding the building and threatening to storm it. Yes … that was war.

He told me that I was welcome to “observe” and ask questions, but that I was not to comment or ask anyone else questions. My first question was “can I have access to an outside phone,” and he said yes … as long as he could hear what I was saying.

WOW! This really was … real.

My first call was to Bill who gave me a number to call at TIME-LIFE. The man on the other end said I was to “file” my initial impressions. “Just tell us everything. We’ll do the rest.” I told him what had happened since I was allowed past the cordon and that my liaison was Leonard Nimoy. The pause at the other end was muffled but I could hear what I thought was the man talking to another person and telling him what I’d said.

He came back. “Leonard Nimoy the actor? Leonard Nimoy from Star Trek? Spock?”

Someone else came on the line. Who the hell is this? How did you get this number?” I explained as quickly as I could and mentioned Jordan Bonfante’s name. Another pause and another voice. “OK … this is what you do. You write down everything you can and file that with us just as soon as the situation changes. Got that?”

I’m sure Leonard (who’d asked me to call him Leonard) heard it all and seemed somewhat amused. He grabbed a steno pad and a cheap pen from the table and handed them to me with a smile. But his mood didn’t last long as one of the watchers called out that the police were starting to move!

A couple of guys burst into the room, “They’re moving away. It looks like they’re leaving. It looks like …” By that time everyone at the table was at the windows and the sense of relief in the room was palpable. “They’re GOING!”

When it became clear that the crisis had passed Leonard shook my hand and thanked me. He told me that someone would accompany me back to the entrance and that they had a lot more to do. Then he leaned close to me and quietly said, “Funny how things work out. I could swear that someone at your end told someone at the police end that this was being covered by the press and that Spock was involved. We’ll probably never know.”

I was secretly hoping he’d give me the Vulcan signal but he wasn’t Spock, he was Leonard Nimoy and he wasn’t acting.

Leonard Nimoy wasn’t acting © Robert R. Feigel 2022 – All Rights Reserved

My NZ visitor’s visa had expired and despite my lawyer’s attempt to get it extended again so I could apply for permanent residency, I had to return to the US and apply from there. Fortunately, friends in Malibu were going overseas and offered me a sublet on their apartment in the Malibu Colony.

It was a small apartment over the garage and was probably a maid’s quarters for the big house in front. The house was owned by a wealthy lady who lived, from memory, in a mansion in Holmby Hills or some other exclusive LA enclave. She didn’t want to leave the beach house unattended, so rented out the garage apartment so someone would be living on the premises.

It was early one morning and I was at my typewriter thinking of thoughts to think. My desk was at the back of the apartment and the window overlooked the private drive that ran from one end of the Colony to the other.

Fingers poised (just in case the muse decided to engage my brain), I heard the faint sound of people singing in the distance. As the singing came closer, I leaned out the partially opened window to get a better look.

What I saw so entranced me that my muse went off to sulk. It was Elizabeth Taylor, arm in arm with Burgess Meredith and James Cagney, skipping down the middle of the road, synchronized like a chorus line.

I’d seen Burgess around Malibu for years and we had a nodding acquaintance, but I’d never seen either Taylor or Cagney before now. So it was fascinating watching these legends in the flesh.

They were all so animated and bursting with joie de vivre. I can’t remember what they’d been singing before. A series of lively tunes. But when they were only a few feet up the road from my window, they stopped and James Cagney did a couple of elegant little dance steps, then looked at Burgess. Without missing a beat Burgess did a little soft shoe shuffle that was close and Elizabeth Taylor followed suit.

Then the trio skipped off briskly while bellowing ‘Singing in the Rain’ at the top of their voices. It was magic and when I couldn’t see them from the window any more, I rushed downstairs to watch from the road. As the music faded into the distance, I saw the trio execute a perfect chorus line right into a house further down the road and into Dyan Canon’s place.

Full of joy. Full of life. That’ how I’ll always remember the lady and her friends.

James Cagney, Elizabeth Taylor and Burgess Meredith – Chorus Line © Robert R. Feigel 2022 – All Rights Reserved

My group of friends and I went through periods of self-imposed solitude and changes of direction. I think the Ouija board incident shook all of us. Another friend and I visited her one night after spending some time at the annual Volksfest next door at the Germania Männerchor. My friend, who spoke German, was upset when an old man came up to us and started ranting in German about WWII and ended by saying, “And next time we’ll beat them and rule the world!.”

The beer was flowing along with the food and music. Everything was Uber this and Uber that and, after awhile, we either had to give into the noise and Uber raucousness or quietly leave.

The noise followed us onto the street and next door to Mariechen’s. The door was opened to a typically ungracious Eric who walked away leaving us to go into the sitting room to greet Mariechen.

Instead of offering us tea she observed that we looked “a bit frazzled” and invited us to go out through the kitchen to her back garden a “take deep breaths.”

The kitchen was small, but so was the cottage. We walked by an old wooden table to the back door and into the garden expecting to hear the noise from the party right next door.

Instead we walked into fragrances and silence. It was like walking through the magic wardrobe into another dimension. We were enveloped in an atmosphere of serenity.

My friend had been there before and led the way along narrow paths through flowers, shrubs and small trees. Like the cottage itself, the garden was small and I wondered where it would end. Then we reached the end of the path were it turned to go back down the other side and there was a small bench under a tree next to a grotto with a small Buddha and waterfall.

With all the small fountains and artificial waterfalls I’d ever seen before, you could always detect the sound of the electric pump. Sitting on the bench with my friend, I could hear nothing but night sounds. No noise from next door. No electric pump. Just water cascading over rocks into water. My friend put his hand on his chest and motioned me to breath deeply.

I’m unsure how long we sat there but when we re-entered the house Mariechen was no longer in her chair and we left quietly. The noise from next door hit us with an almost physical force on the street.

A few week later something happened in my apartment that shook me so deeply that I asked for Mariechen’s help. My bedroom had originally been the dining room and had a good sized fireplace on the wall. When I moved in the landlady had specifically prohibited me from having fires because the chimney hadn’t been swept in years and was blocked in places. A fire could cause the accumulated soot to explode.

It wasn’t a difficult prohibition to honor since I didn’t want smoke in my bedroom and the heater the landlady had provided worked well enough.

When I got home from work one afternoon there was a note stuck to my entry door. I was to phone the landlady immediately.

At first she sounded angry. “Why did you have a fire when I specifically asked you not to,” she demanded. “But I didn’t.” “Then someone did.” “But I’m the only one staying here.” And so on, back and forth until she let out a big sigh and told me that the fire department had been called in by an upstairs neighbor when smoke started spilling out of her fireplace on the floor above mine.

The landlady (who lived next door) had used her key to get into my apartment, open the hallway doors and let the firemen in. “The thing is, they couldn’t find any fire or even a hint there’d been one in your fireplace.” They’d left thinking the smoke that my upstairs neighbor had seen was imagined. “But still,” she said “there’d been smoke.”

She apologized for jumping on me but she’d been embarrassed and hoping I could, at the very least, provide some explanation.

By that time I hadn’t had a chance to just “feel” the place. Now that the drama seemed to have passed I became aware that it felt different. It felt uneasy, or maybe it was just me. But it felt like the atmosphere had been disrupted or unsettled. It felt odd. Like I shouldn’t be there.

That night while I was sitting in bed trying to make sense of what had happened earlier the temperature suddenly dropped and I became aware of some presence in the corner between the fireplace and the double doors into the hallway. It was very subtle and not easy to discern. I could see it better in my peripheral vision than looking straight at it. There was a faint shimmering with an outline that looked to me like a person.

There are various types of fear I’ve experienced and this was wasn’t a rational fear or a fear of injuring myself or someone else. It was a fear that shuttered through my body. Yet it led beyond fear to a new place, like a grounding. There was a hyper-awareness that helped me understand that my fear was primal and understandable, but it wasn’t necessary. I could reason my way through this.

Deep breathing. I gathered my inner strength, reached out with it and said aloud, “Hello … my name is Bob. Please know you have nothing to fear from me. I’m alone but I know someone who can help.” It never occurred to me to question what I said or why I said it. The words just came and I felt stronger. My fear had gone.

As I watched, the shimmering in the corner slowly took shape and for a brief flash I saw what looked like a young male cowering in the corner with his hands held in front of his head as if he was protecting himself from being hit. It was there and then gone … along with the chill.

The next day I phone a friend, explained what had happened and asked if he thought I should phone Mariechen. He offered to do it and within the hour I got a call from her explaining what she thought was happening and what I should do to prepare for her to come over to help “guide the lost spirit.’

I call it an exorcism but Mariechen didn’t. She called it “guiding.”

I’d made sure there were no electric lights or appliances on when she arrived and left her alone in the kitchen as she set up candles around the kitchen. After a few minutes she appeared in my bedroom and asked where “those doors” led to. What doors?” I’d seen one small door near the outside wall of the kitchen but never opened it. I thought it might be a cupboard.

Mariechen had found another door at an oblique angle to the wall that I thought was separating the kitchen from the dining room. It had never occurred to me to wonder why there was no sign of the other side of the fireplace on that wall.

That door led to the stairway down to basement I didn’t know was there so there was a wide space between that wall and the dining room. The other, smaller door led to “the service” stairs that allowed the servants to come and go without using the main stairway.

Mariechen insisted that all the doors remain open while she contacted and communicated with the spirit.

Firstly, she walked through the entire place silently, cocking her head from time to time as if she was listening for something. Finally, she announced that there was indeed a spirit that needed help and that he’d been trapped here for many years.

I can’t tell you what she did because my friend and I were asked to stay in the bedroom and not say a word or react if we saw anything. My friend and I sat quietly on the end of the bed facing the fireplace when he nudged me and nodded towards the doorway and the place where I’d seen shimmering. I was seeing it again, but later, he told me he’d seen a person there before it faded.

The sudden chill took us by surprise but with someone sitting close and knowing that Mariechen was in the kitchen made it a lot less disturbing. The chill dissipated as quickly as it came.

“You can come in now,” from the kitchen. Mariechen sat at the kitchen table looking a bit tired, but calm. She explained that there had been two spirits. The troubled one had been a young soldier in the Civil War and “ruined his right arm” when it was burned in an accident that involved the fireplace. He’d become depressed and taken his own life in this very room. The other spirit was a maiden aunt who’d stayed behind to help him. She’d been the sweeper.

Mariechen had helped release them from the endless repetition of their spiritual incarceration that ended with his suicide and they were now free to “find peace.”

She also cautioned me to stay away from the basement, but I had no intention of going down there. However, I did start to explore the “service staircase” and found it was blocked off at the floor above me.

Mariechen’s son Eric died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound in 2005 at the age of 65 and Mariechen passed on at the physical age of 93 in 2012. Hopefully she was able to guide her troubled son to a place of peace.

EPILOGUE

In the years that followed I continued to have spiritual or psychic experiences but didn’t actively seek them … except once.

On a Halloween night Anne and I and my two stepdaughters were visiting the rural home of the couple who’d be best man and maid of honor at our wedding a few years later. They were also the only two present besides the marriage celebrant and us.

One of our friend’s younger sister lived with them as well and since it was Halloween the girls decided to watch a scary movie in the television room. I thought it would be fun to blow up a rubber glove and attach it to a mop handle so I could make some spooky sounds and stick the and through a window above where the girls were sitting.

It got the desired response. Screams followed by derision once they figured out my ruse. Then we all ended up at the dining room table for a session with their Ouija Board. The board was new and they’d never used it before. As the directions were brought out I explained that I’d used one before and offered to set the scene.

Candles. No electric lights. Over the table there was a big mother of pearl chandelier.

The table itself was round, big enough to seat eight and made of teak. Thick, solid teak.

After explaining how it worked I asked everyone to be silent and concentrate while I was going to summon a spirit. At that stage I wasn’t taking any of this seriously. And that was a serious mistake. I called on a spirit to join us and when nothing happened I asked more forecefully.

The temperature in the room suddenly dropped and the chandelier started shaking and making noise. Then the surface of the solid teak table started to ripple, like waves across water. The board was dislodged and the girls screamed. Anne barked, “Stop it!.” And the table, which was so heavy I couldn’t even lift a side of it earlier, started to jump off its legs and levitate.

Things were out of control and as everyone pushed away from the table I shouted out, “Spirit, hear me. Go back to where you came from. Go back NOW! GO!” And everything except us went back to normal. We were all shaken and the atmosphere lightened when our host laughed and asked me how I’d done all that. “Did you lift the table with your knees?” Someone else said I must have blown on the chandelier to make it shake and rattle. I wasn’t about to contradict them or try that ever again.

Mariechen Al-An’ © Robert R. Feigel 2022 – All Rights Reserved

The cottage was at 920 N. Fulton Avenue in Evansville, next door to the Germania Männerchor, the social and cultural center established by the area’s early German settlers. Her front door was just off the street. We’d enter a short hallway that had a door on the right that opened onto her sitting room.

The room had shelves of tea pots and tea cups and we’d be asked to choose a cup and the pot we’d like the tea steeped in. If it was some sort of test, I passed it.

We’d also be asked to choose what herbal tea we’d like. But since I’d never had herbal tea before I let my friends choose. By that time Mariechen would invite us to sit down in one of the comfortable old chairs, the small sofa or, in the case they were already occupied, a cushion quickly supplied thrown onto on one of the rugs.

Mariechen herself always sat in the big wing chair that was clearly “her chair.” It didn’t take long to get used to the routines.

Sometimes Mariechen’s son Eric would answer the door and take us through. But usually the door would be partly opened and you’d walk in to a welcome from her in the sitting room. He was a big guy with a big body and head. His hair was a sort of dirty blond and his eyes never smiled.

Some old places smell musty. Mariechen’s cottage smelled like freshly baked cookies, flowers and clean washing with just a hint of sandalwood.

I’d only made a few friends at college and had met them all, at one time or another, in our psychiatrist’s office. My dad and stepmom had insisted that I consult a “shrink” because they’d caught me smoking marijuana with their pet Schnauzer. The dog and I had become instant friends and he loved to lay across my chest in bed at night and inhale the smoke I exhaled. The folks had become suspicious after he insisted on coming to my room at night instead of theirs.

The ultimatum was simple. Either start with the shrink or be the subject of a petition to have me declared insane for “blowing LSD smoke inn the poor little dog’s face.” I’m afraid my hysterical laughter at this didn’t help and I submitted to twice weekly visits until the shrink “decides otherwise.”

Most of my new friends were younger than I and once they learned I was from California I was welcomed into their eclectic little group.

We were all from wealthy families. Then you had be in order to afford the shrink. There was Alex, whose family owned drug stores. Mike, whose family lived in a big house in what had once been the huge estate of the Mead Johnson family. And Billy, whose father was a well-known designer who did all the interiors for Lear Jets. It was white privilege off the rails.

It was through them that I first met Mariechen, although after the first visits I’d go over on my own more often than not.

She seemed to take a special interest in me, which didn’t endear me to her son. When I’d encounter him at the door he’d bristle with dislike and glower at me like I was an insect he’d like to stomp on. But Mariechen would soon dismiss him or send him on some errand.

Mariechen advised me to stop taking all the drugs the shrink had me taking and one night I was in a smoke filled car with my friends when someone said something that I found hilarious. But I couldn’t laugh. My ability to laugh was somewhere below the drug effect like pain can be buried beneath a layer of pain killers but still be there.

That night I dumped the Librium and some sort of “mood elevator” down the toilet and told my shrink. I’d been having doub5w qgou5 the shrink for awhile and been able to drop back to one visit a week with his approval. But now that I’d been able to cut myself loose from the drugs I wanted to be free of him as well.

We had nothing in common. It was like we were from different planets. Certainly different cultures. Then I occurred to me that he was just as screwed up as we were. He was stuck in a wheelchair behind his desk and here we were, young, physically active and relatively attractive and able to run like the wind.

So rather than him pump me with more questions I asked him how he felt about being stuck in the wheel chair and … before I could get any further he told me to get out of his office and never come back.

My dad informed me that the shrink had told him I didn’t need to come back and what I needed now was some discipline and “direction.” I assume that he accepted I would no longer blow LSD smoke in the dog’s face. The dog seemed to miss it more than I did.

While I was in Evansville, I kept up a lively correspondence with my Malibu friends and got the terrible news that one of them had committed suicide. Accepting the news was made more difficult because my new friends didn’t know him or comprehend how deeply I felt about his death. So I kept the news to myself.

One evening at Mariechen’s Billy asked if we could try her Ouija Board. All the others knew what it was but I didn’t. So it was explained to me and I was immediately skeptical because I figured that anyone who wanted could fake it and move around the well worn planchette without anyone else knowing it. Billy had already removed the board and planchette from under the silk scarf where it lived and set it on the floor in front of our cushions.

Mariechen called upon a spirit to join us and after a few moments the atmosphere in the room became heavy and a bit sinister. Mariechen cautioned us to take all this seriously and requested the spirit to interact with the board and guide us.

After a brief pause she directed some general questions and asked the spirit for their name. Slowly, hesitantly the name that came up was the name of the friend I’d recently lost to suicide. Mariechen spoke. “One of you here are known to the spirit and has called the spirit here tonight.” When none of my friends responded I felt both dread and embarrassment at being pointed out. She looked down at me from her chair and asked if I knew who it was and I said yes, he was a friend. She cautioned that he was what she termed “an unquiet spirit” and was going to leave..

That was when I blurted out, “Why did you kill yourself Phil? Why?”

We’d taken our fingers off of the planchette once Phil’s name had been spelled out and none of us touching it when the board started shaking and the planchette flew across the room and broke a tea cup that had been sitting unused on a shelf. Mariechen threw up her hands to protect herself from the pieces and started chanting in a language that I didn’t recognize. We all sat there stunned at what we’d witnessed and nobody spoke until Mariechen simply said, “The lesson is, never again ask an unquiet spirit a question like that. I should have warned you first and the lesson is for me as well.”

Later, we discussed it and Mariechen explained that she should have been wary when “the spirit joined us so quickly.” And that I must have brought him with me because I’d been thinking about him so much. She advised me to let him go so he could find his way to “the peace he didn’t have in his former life.”

And that’s a lesson I’ve tried hard to follow with so many loved ones since then.

Mariechen Al-An’© Robert R. Feigel 2022 – All Rights Reserved

Before I describe Mariechen Al-An’ I need to describe how Evansville, Indiana was run when I was growing up. Firstly, it was segregated. Southern Indiana might be in a northern state, but it was still living in the south. After all, it was only a short drive down Highway 41 and across the bridge that spanned the Ohio River to Henderson, Kentucky.

According to some stories I heard, during the Civil War, soldiers on one side of the river had various ways to warn the soldiers on the other side that they were about to fire rifles or cannons in their direction. The river might separate North and South, but family loyalties were more important.

Leading families could get away with thing others couldn’t. The most blatant example I can remember was a young man who literally got away with murder. He was a friend of a friend and visited my family home for a night watching television while my dad and stepmom were away. He was home on leave after completing boot camp in the marines. Later, I learned he’d been forced to decide between jail or the marines after an agreement between his influential oil business father and a cooperative judge.

After a few beers and watching a WWII war movie he seemed to get a bit strange and as my friend and his friend left the house to walk down to the street where their car was parked the guy suddenly let out a scream and rolled down the front lawn as if he was carrying a gun, shooting and yelling “Gooks. Gooks! GO .. GO! I’ll cover for ya. Kill the Gooks!”

His behavior was a concern, but as long as the neighbors weren’t upset (and no one reported it) I let it slip from my mind because he was due to return to his base for further training.

A week later, I heard the news that he’d killed his father in the driveway of their substantial home. There had been some sort of disagreement that escalated into an argument that led to the young man getting his .22 semiautomatic rifle and shooting his father several times before leaving the house.

The father was badly wounded, but not dead and stumbled out to plead with his son on their driveway where the gun jammed. Then he beat his father to the ground with the rifle butt, rushed back into the house and got another .22 and emptied that into his father. When the police arrived the father was barely alive and pleaded with them not to charge his son with murder.

The son was charged with discharging a firearm in the city limits, paid the fine and was sent back to the marines.

So it’s not surprising that, decades earlier, the the Bishop of the Roman Catholic diocese of Evansville was able to get Mariechen jailed for “practicing witchcraft” and was the last person in Indiana to have been charged with the offence under an old state law. The Catholic Church was major part of the power structure back then and the presiding bishop at the time would have wielded a huge amount of influence with politicians and the legal system.

Mariechen was a spiritualist, clairvoyant and a member of an international group of spiritualists called the “White Angels” who helped guide the spirits of those killed suddenly in events like plane crashes, explosions and crimes of violence to “transition.” The way she explained it to me was that many of these spirits are confused and lost. They’re unable to understand the sudden strangeness. They need someone who can help them understand their new circumstances and move on to the next dimension. Spirits that don’t make the transition because they don’t realize or accept that they’re no longer living physical beings are those that become a “ghost,” “poltergeist” or “lost spirit.”

In addition to being a spirit guide Mariechen seemed to attract young people who wanted to learn what she had to teach. Before her arrest some of those who would gather at her little cottage and enjoy cookies and cups of tea were young men from the Roman Catholic seminary. They were being taught religion at the seminary. But what they wanted was spiritual training and revelations.

The Church found out about this and had Mariechen was arrested under the old law that hadn’t been used for decades. She was also the last and known as “the last person jailed for witchcraft in Indiana.”

The courts weren’t as easily manipulated as the local police nd, although Mariechen spent a few days in jail, she was released and the charges dropped. Years later the law was dropped from the statute books.

So Mariechen came with an edgy dose of notoriety and street-creds when we were introduced.

I’ll save the stories about the adventures I experienced with my college friends for later. But it was because I accompanied them to a session at Mariechen’s cottage that we formed a bond that connected us for years.

Mariechen Al-An’© Robert R. Feigel 2022 – All Rights Reserved

After I quit college for the final time I worked a couple of jobs before heading back to California. I drove a shuttle bus for the organization that schooled, trained and employed intellectually handicapped children and adults. I had a short stint as a DJ at a top-40 station.

Both those jobs have stories of their own. But this is about the amazing woman I asked to exorcise a “spirit” or “ghost” from the apartment I was living in.

The apartment was in a big old post-civil war house near the Ohio River in Evansville, Indiana. The three story house had been divided up into a number of apartments and mine consisted of a sunroom entrance that led to the kitchen and dining room.

The sunroom was a sort of living room that looked out onto what was now a small backyard. The kitchen was big, with a table in the center. And the dining room was also quite big. That was used for the bedroom. To add to the elegance of the room and its walnut panels and skirting was a fireplace and a chandelier.

The landlady had forbidden me to use the fireplace for safety reasons and I put colored light bulbs in the chandelier because I thought they added to the ambience. What she hadn’t told me about was the kitchen door that led to a narrow set of stairs for the servants and the door from the pantry going down to the basement. Those I had to find out about for myself. But more of that later.

It was in a part of town that had once been where the successful middle class lived. Not the very rich who lived facing the river on South East Riverside Drive or one street back, but further inland from the river where the next level in the pecking order built their large family homes. They all would have had maids, cooks and gardeners. But the downsizing and subdivision of the large original properties had seen some less grand houses take the places of original stables and coach houses.

The rent was cheap and my neighbors were people of varying ages taking advantage of the low rents.

Some strange happenings occurred while I was there. Flickering lights. A lightening ball that came through an open sash window during a rain storm and did a circuit around the room before exiting from another window.

The strangest was a sweeping sound that I’d hear at night right outside the tall sliding doors that opened onto a wide hallway outside the dining room I used as my bedroom. It didn’t happen every night, but got to the point where I’d tiptoe up to the doors (which were locked on my side) and suddenly slid them open in order to catch whomever it was outside the doors.

These were tall, heavy solid oak doors so I wasn’t worried that someone could ever break in. But the sound had become somewhat irritating and I wanted it to stop.

The hall was big and to my right there was a wide, carpeted stairway that went up to the next floor. I’d burst into the hall and check the stairway and the two doors that led off the hallway into the other apartments on the ground floor. Then I’d feel a bit stupid because there was nobody there except a chill.

The more often I tried to catch “the sweeper” the chiller it got out there. So I gave up and decided to hitchhike up to Bloomington to visit some friends who went to Indiana University.

While I was gone I loaned my place two two friends who needed a place to rendezvous for sex. They were very grateful because they’d run out of places and since my male friend was a local and his family well-known, he didn’t want his parents to find out.

When I came back after a week or so I found the place empty. My friends had only spent one night there before deciding it was too weird to stay any longer. They told me the lights kept flicking on and off, things would fall off shelves in the kitchen and the temperature would suddenly drop. My female friend said she could see a vague, transparent form in the corner by the doors to the hallway. “And then there’s that sweeping sound. It’s all too spooky.”

Since I hadn’t told anyone about my experiences I was, in a small way, relieved that someone else had heard the sound. But the next occurrence convinced me that the place really was “spooky.”

Mariechen Al-An’© Robert R. Feigel 2022 – All Rights Reserved