Los Angeles, California
Sometimes people enter your life briefly, and you are not meant to be lifetime friends. But, if you are lucky, there is a memory attached to these people which is golden, if not priceless. The summer I graduated from high school there was a huge rock concert near my home. It was called Newport 69 and it preceded Woodstock by months. It was a momentous collection of rock music artists which included, among other groups: Jimi Hendrix; Joe Cocker; Creedence Clearwater; Jethro Tull; Three Dog Night; The Byrds; Marvin Gaye; Ike and Tina Turner, and The Rascals. Pam and I attended the festival on both Saturday and Sunday, but on Sunday, which was the last day of the event, she wanted to leave early so we wandered about looking for someone we knew who wasn't stoned out of their minds; someone who I could hang out with after she left. We walked back and forth, even across the crush in front of the stage. After she agreed to walk with me just one more time, I spotted Ned. I had known Ned since our days at Northridge Junior High. He was just a semester behind me back in the waning days of Los Angeles Unified having Winter and Spring mid-term students. He would be returning to finish high school in the fall semester.
While I had a boyfriend (or two) throughout high school, Ned was someone I had flirted with in my senior year. We had one class together, journalism. My passion was writing; his was ceramics. And, as we said in the day, he was really cute. And this cute guy hugged me when I approached him at the festival. Can I stay with you? His response was of course! And he hoisted me up on his shoulders so I could get a better look at the stage above us, as we were so close to it. Pam went home, and we stayed. I was blissfully happy to share the music, and his grass, with Ned.
I lived close enough to the event that we were able to walk together to my house when it ended, where I grabbed the keys to my VW bug and told my parents I was going to drive Ned home. And, in the driveway of the house he shared with his single-parent mom, he kissed me. And he said to me: Do you want to come in? My mom works nights. But I was still thinking of Ned as this younger guy, even though in truth, he was less than six months younger than me. I demurred.
I saw Ned almost every day over the next ten days and I met his mom, who knew my name before I arrived. It would make a great story to write that I fell in love with Ned. And, had Pam and I not been leaving for Hawaii with my family, I am certain that I would have. He was interesting, smart, artistic, and, oh yeah, cute. Where had he been throughout my high school years? A semester behind me, and passing me in the halls.
The last night we spent together, in the course of a moderate make-out session, Ned told me that he was taking a trip to Canada for most the summer (a kid of a cool single mom, and almost 18 anyway). And, he reminded me, that I was going to be in Hawaii. But, he added: We'll be together when we both get back. I drove away from his house that night. And... I never saw him again. As years passed, I always wondered about Ned, and I have even searched him online. But there was no shared future for us. Not a word; not even a passing glance.
This, however has nothing to do with Jaime Jarrín, who is the Spanish language announcer for the Dodgers and is now in his sixty-third (yes 63rd) year in that role at eighty-six years old. So here is the Jaime Jarrín story...
All of us who worked out at Jane Fonda's Workout Studio in the '80s were crushed when she pulled the plug on the studios. Luckily, in 1987, someone stepped in to take over our location, building out an even better studio with some of the Fonda instructors and some new ones. One of the new ones was Anne Marie. She was bright, and funny, and I found I had a lot in common with her. Our families' homes were walking distance from each other, and she had been confirmed at the same local Catholic parrish church as my husband. We often talked after class, and when Anne Marie became pregnant with her daughter, Allison, I attended her shower at Paradise Dance and Aerobics.
One day in 1990, we went together after class to the yogurt shop that was in the same small shopping complex. During the course of our conversation, Anne Marie asked me if Tom and I were free that evening. Her husband, Kurt, had been offered four tickets to that evening's Dodgers' game. And so, the five of us went; Allison, who was eight months old, in a carrier.
Allison slept through the entire game, as we enjoyed beer, hot dogs, and Fernando Valenzuela pitching a no-hitter! I often wondered about the person who had surrendered the tickets to Kurt. Since everyone who had a brain stayed until the end of the game, the exiting situation in the parking lot was fraught. So we hung out in our car, talking about the game and sharing stories. One of the stories was that after Anne Marie and Kurt got together, in those early first years, whenever Kurt stubbed his toe or hit his thumb with a hammer, he would cry out: Jaime Jarrín! Anne Marie always assumed that Kurt was swearing in Spanish, which she had not studied in school. And soon, she was also using the oath of Jaime Jarrín! whenever she ran into something or in other circumstances calling for a good cussing. And on one of those occasions, when she swore Jaime Jarrín! in front of someone familiar with the Dodgers, they asked her why in the Sam Hill she was saying that. My husband always says it, was her response. I don't know what it means, but it's Spanish. And it was then that Anne Marie learned not what Jaime Jarrín meant, but who Jaime Jarrín is.
We reciprocated for the no-hitter by inviting Anne Marie and Kurt to join us one night that same summer at The Hollywood Bowl, where we had season tickets. It was a program featuring the movie Singing in the Rain with live music provided by The Hollywood Bowl Orchestra. Gene Kelly came on the stage before the film. I brought a picnic dinner and a bottle of champagne, and asked Anne Marie to bring another bottle. We finished our meal and both bottles of champagne, and the movie began. Anne Marie leaned over to me and whispered: We brought another bottle. Shall we open it? Uh, yeah! We were two couples who thought alike, and I am sure we would have become good friends. Except that shortly after that, the three of them moved to Salinas, where Kurt had gotten a job with the city. They had another daughter, Emily. And we lost track of each other.
One morning, in early January of 2007, I was reading the Monterey Herald at the little, round table in the kitchen of the home we had begun renting for the month of January. Tom had flown home to LA, and my mom, sister and brother-in-law were flying in that day. I was shocked to see Kurt's obituary, and read that he had passed away at the age of 57. And even more shocking, years later I read an article in the same newspaper about Anne Marie, who was suffering with early-onset Alzheimer's disease. She passed away in 2019 at the age of 60. She was the first, and so far only, contemporary of mine to succumb to Alzheimer's.
Maybe in a way, it's good that I never learned the fate of Ned. Having lost Pam recently, I am haunted by the ghosts of my past: by the rock festival and concerts; the Waikiki of that summer, which no longer exists; kisses in VW bugs and a whole lot of other cars, as well as the three no-hitters I have seen at Dodgers' Stadium. But mostly, I am haunted by the memory of these friends who, for me, are still in their youth or young adulthood. Their smiles, their laughter. And the sound of their voices, which I still hear, sometimes even swearing Jaime Jarrín!
