Cheryl Ladd and Smokey The Bear

What do you do when you have to choose what's important

I like to figure out things and think by driving. Always have. It’s why me and the Integrated Baseball Performance Coach for the Pittsburgh Pirates came up with the idea for Paseo De Pete, our monthly little twenty-minute drive with a friend to go get some food and talk about things. We’re going to share that with all you paid subscribers at the end of today’s post, I’m excited to see how you all like these little extras I’m tossing in along the way.

Before that, though. I want to provoke you all with a question.

What are the five most important things you can remember from your childhood bedroom?

Some loyal and smart readers might still spend some time in those bedrooms, if you are a student in college now. Others might have come a long way from those days and recalling five things from that bedroom will be a mental exercise that will strain you to exertion. I’ll go first, don’t worry.

1. Smokey The Bear sign from the Grand Canyon.

2. AM/FM Clock Radio (non digital clock)

3. Ted Williams Sears model baseball glove

4. Cheryl Ladd poster

5. Pinewood Derby car on shelf.

Whew. That didn’t take long. Wonder why we’re doing this yet? Because although we were very safe during the L.A. fires, we did get one or two evacuation warnings (not orders) during them. And I was faced with some choices to make. We all had different ideas, of course. Some of us wanted to take it all (not possible) because it’s all important and everything is imbued with the power of memory and love and cherish. I was resistant to taking anything. Secretly hoping for an evacuation order that would come with no warning order to proceed it, if an order had to come at all. Because I’d want to have no time to consider taking anything. Just time to grab my go bag and jump in the truck. I think I had the same feeling of wanting to take it all, but also wanting to defer that decision totally by pressure of time. In the end, we all felt the same way but were at different points on the timeline of figuring that out. And the Integrated Baseball Performance Coach for the Pittsburgh Pirates who was staying with us for a few weeks, had this to offer. “Go into each room and take the single most valuable thing in that room, then blaze out of here.” I don’t think he said the word ‘blaze,’ but it’s my article, I get to say what I want. And ‘blaze’ is something young people say, right? They say that, right? Not only did he offer this provocation, but he already had his answer to what was the most valuable thing in his room. I was busy trying to decide how to determine what “value” meant to me, but he was already at the end of his timeline on this matter. “The Shohei Ohtani bobblehead, of course.” Of course. And yeah, that’s the most valuable thing in his room.

As I was filling up the cars with gas in case we had to leave, I let my mind wander back to my childhood bedroom and what was valuable in it? And here we are. Valuable to me is irreplaceable, with deep meaning under it, and something I can hold in my hands. I think the hold in my hands idea isn’t about size but about the tactile nature of memory and the power of holding onto something. So let’s look at the five things in my childhood bedroom with that in mind and see if it all holds up.

1. Smokey The Bear sign from the Grand Canyon.

I got this as a gift from my Uncle Dave, who worked at the Grand Canyon one summer. I am not sure what his job exactly was there. Because the stories I heard about this job mostly were about how he and his roommates would challenge each other to dumb things like who could shoplift a watermelon and not get caught. Or could you drink a whole six pack of beer without taking the cans out of the plastic ring holder? As a child, this sounded like it might have been the most important job and the most fun job in the world. I believe he also ‘liberated’ this sign from the Grand Canyon. Therefore it hung above my bed and not only did it exhort me to “PREVENT FOREST FIRES,” it also let me know that when I grew up, finding a job like the one Uncle Dave had would be a priority.

So valuable, I think on all three rules stated above.

2. AM/FM Clock Radio (non digital clock)

This clock radio had notches cut into the wheel that you spun to tune in radio stations. Cut by me with a knife. So that I could feel in the dark after I was told it was “Lights out,” and find Vin Scully and the Dodgers or 96 Rock FM and the Rock and Roll Air Force or on Sundays, “The Doctor Demento Radio Show,” all very very very important things to listen to when parents think you’re sleeping.

This one might be replaceable, but I think the carved notches in the tuning wheel put it over the top and it has a place on the list.

3. Ted Williams Sears model baseball glove

Dad worked at Sears. Ted Williams, the greatest hitter that ever lived, had a line of sporting goods sold by Sears. So that’s what I got for my birthday one year. I bet I could get on Ebay right now and find one.

You Can Buy Me One It's Almost My Birthday

Yup. But here’s what made my mitt make my list. The first year I had that mitt, my team won not only the Little League championship, but the city championship. And at the city championship game, an actual Los Angeles Dodger came to yell, “Play Ball!.” It was Tommy John, who many of you may know as the first person to undergo surgery where they would take a ligament from somewhere on his body and put it in his elbow so he could still keep pitching. He signed my glove. And every year after that, just to make sure that the autograph stayed ‘fresh,’ I’d go over it again with an ink pen. What? I didn’t know I was ruining the autograph, I thought I was making it last. So irreplaceable, and some memories and also a lesson if you didn’t need more reminders of what an idiot I am, there you go.

4. Cheryl Ladd poster

This was a poster of my favorite actress and country and western singer, Cheryl Ladd.

Also, an actress on Charlie’s Angels. And maybe the least qualified item on my list. In fact, it only makes my list if you allow me to move along my timeline to 1998. I was working as a writer on a TV show and Cheryl Ladd was cast as someone who Cristina Applegate’s dad on the show has a crush on and asks out on a date. I asked if it was okay to have her autograph something for me, and I went and got a poster off of ebay, not the original one from my room, and she signed it for me. Pretty amazing. But if something has to leave the list, it is this because that original poster isn’t the one. It’s the start of a story that ends with the poster I have now. But I’m keeping it on the list because isn’t it cool that I got to meet and work with her? I think it is.

5. Pinewood Derby car on shelf.

I was in Cub Scouts, and I was in Boy Scouts for a while. Never made it to Eagle Scout. But there was this thing called Pinewood Derby where you got a small block of wood and you would carve it and turn it into a car with wheels and axles and you’d race them on a track. The car was about six or seven inches long. The idea is you carve it with your dad and then you go race it with other scouts and their dads on a track where gravity just takes it from a height on down to the finish line on a straight path.

This is valuable to me because I did carve it with my dad. And he let me use the carving tools – I think my dad is cool because I don’t think he had any of the, “Hmm, that might be too dangerous for you to do because you aren’t old enough,” energy in him. He was strict about everything but also was, “Hand me that axe and let’s get to work.” Now the Pinewood Derby had rules and you had to have your car measured and weighed before you could race it. There was a table for registration. And I don’t think either of us figured on that. Because knowing how this whole thing worked, we had hollowed out some of our block of wood, filled it with fishing weights, then covered that hole with glue and wood fill. We sanded it, and painted it, and it was a VERY HEAVY car that was going to kick ass on the track as it used gravity to pull it down the ramp.

I have this very specific memory of seeing that registration table that had a ruler and also a scale and going back to the car. Were we going to scrape the paint and somehow get those hidden weights out of there? Nope. That would never work. We used a Sanding block and we cut and sanded this thing until it was so skinny the front of the car looked like it was gonna break off if you touched it. Don’t know how, but it passed registration, and we made the finals even though we didn’t win. With my Dad and Uncle Dave, it is very clear to me that I come from a genial but larcenous bunch.

Take the time to go back in time and come up with these items yourself. It won’t be wasted time, I promise. It’ll give you a smile and it’ll give you the gift of details you didn’t think you remembered. Let me know what your items are. Show me a picture or tell me about them. I want to know.

Final thing before I let you paid subscribers get to part two of Paseo De Pete. I went and got those socks I was telling you about a few weeks back, and I’ve been doing my part of giving them out. On Wednesday night, I sat inside the Japanese American Cultural and Community Center Aratani Theater with 400 lifetime learners. People from the neighborhood of Little Tokyo, ASU Poitier Film Students, ASU FiDM students all watching the pilot episode of “Shogun,” on the big screen followed up by a moderated conversation with The Costume Designer, and two historians. As I looked around at the scene, couldn’t help but think of the ASU Charter and how we’re measuring that event that’s free to the community and includes everyone, and how we’re being responsible to the community of DTLA and Little Tokyo that we serve with our partner orgs.

At the end of the night, on the way to my car, I was also able to give a pair of socks to someone who was looking for a place to bed down for the night and was wearing flip flops in the pouring rain, as they looked for shelter.

Do small and big things all the time. You’ll be surprised by them. If you enjoy these, tell someone. Best way to grow things is by word of mouth.

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And now — Paseo De Pete for paid subscribers