33

The Buckleys had moved to Las Vegas, and were frequent visitors. They had a place called the "mattress mine". [ insert #1 ]. We could sleep eight people in our three houses but there was a lot of work to be done. The corrugated roof were rust colored and needed a coat of aluminum paint. Air conditioners were essential and some plumbing was needed.
Tommy began to commute to Los Angeles to work and came home on Friday. All week I was alone there until Fred finished his three years with the Marines and joined us. He went to work tending bar at a little place across the river on the Nevada side. It was the only building there. Today of course it has a name. Laughlin, Nev. Gambling mecca on the Colorado.
I met a girl at Lisbeth's when I visited her in Las Vegas, Beverly, and mentioned that I needed help. She said, I know just the guy. He's on vacation, but wants something to do".
"Do you think he'd be interested ?", I asked. "Free room and board and all the trout he can eat?"
I'll ask him," Beverly said. And that's how Albert came into my life. It was a hot afternoon when he and Beverly came into the cool of the kitchen. It was a weekend and the usual party was going on. Tommy always brought three or four people wlith him from L.A. and it was party time every weekend. His cool blue eyes met mine and as we shook hands I felt a shock I can't describe. I felt sure everyone in the room could see how moved I was. He declined the offer of a drink from Tom, with a polite,"No thank you, I don't drink". How refreshing, I thought. I was getting fed up with all the boozing and looked forward to the quiet when everyone went back to L.A.

Albert on George Von Physter's Boat 50's

Albert was just what was needed. He painted the roofs with aluminum paint, aluminium, he called it. He was from Canada. He installed air conditioners in the two smaller buildings and fixed all the plumbing. I had bought a large rug for the cabin reserved for couples. The other house had two sets of bunk beds. One warm afternoon as we were laying the rug it happened. We had been more than cordial, very careful not to touch each other or make any moves toward each other, but that day the promise I had felt on the day we met couldn't wait any longer. We were alone. Tom was in L.A. Fred was working and the feelings were too strong to resist. On that lush shag rug we made love. Unpremeditated. It had tohappen and it was wonderful.

34

Albert held me in his arms. "I shouldn't have done that", he said, ".you're a married woman."
"We shouldn't have", I corrected him, "but I'm glad it happened. From the day I first saw you I knew that we would,r- we should be together. Don't blame your self, I"m glad. It had to happen."

We tried not to show how much in love we were when Tommy and his friends were there but we could hardly wait for them to leave. Albert was so very different from anyone I'd known. He had a purity about him. He was thirty-: five, had never been married, And he didn't drink; he hated alcohol. Later I found out why. He was a love child, and when his mother married and had other children she sent him to live with two of his uncles, who drank and fought, and as with most children he felt himself to blame for their heated arguments. They were cod fishermen, but Albert knew that was not the life for him.

One day he told me, " As soon as I was able I left Canada and decided to go south til I'd never see snow again, and if it snowed there, I'd go further south." He was delicately but strongly built, with steel grey hairwith the deliberate manner of the Capricorn which he was.
All night and the next day, the day Tommy was to leave it rained, it poured. I was afraid he wouldn't go because he can't paint when it's raining, but the news reported that L.A. was clear. The minute he drove away we rushed into each other's arms with joyful kisses.We went out to the bunk-house and were in the midst of love making when we heard a car pull into the driveway. Albert looked out the window.

"My God: it's Tommy." There was no time to dress or pretend to be doing something else. Tommy opened the door and was speechless for a moment, a strange hurt look on his face. We didn't say a word, just sat on the bed looking ashamed of ourselves, which we weren't. We were ashamed of having been caught in the act.

Tommy finally spoke, "My wife and my friend! How could you! I trusted you!" He began to cry. We both acted very repentent and finally convinced him it was the first time and that we were sorry etc. etc.

35

"The road was washed out by a flash flood or I never would have come back". He forgave both of us and we promised to behave. He believed us because he wanted to believe. I went to the cabin where the fateful rug had been laid and sat at the four seat bar in the front room, all day with tears streaming from my eyes, but no sobs or sounds came out. I don't know who or what I was crying for ; I guess for all of us. For Tommy who wanted so desperately to believe. For Albert, who had said, "I can't stay here now. I'll be leaving in a few days. Are you coming with me?" I had a decision to make and I already knew what I had to do.

Next day I looked around at the furnishings, the piano, the oil painting of me, all the household things, and remembered El Paso when I'd had to leave SO many things behind once before. But they were only things. Albert was real. The realest man I'd ever known. He was sincere. And I loved him.

Monday Tommy went to L.A. as usual and we packed my car and left Bullhead City , which wasn't a city at all but just a little dusty desert town on the banks of the Colorado, The red river. The red river valley. I didn't tell Fred we were leaving. The same old Hudson coupe that I had loaned Fred took us to Santa Monica , where we rented a motel room til we could plan our mext move. We went to the movies, walked in the Palisades over-looking the Pacific ocean, and we made love. He asked me, "Are you satisfied with our love making? I know you've been married before and I do want to please you." He was earnest.

"My dear, if it pleases you it pleases me." There was nothing I would not do for him.

36

I had gone out to get a pizza for us and in walked Lisbeth Buckley while I was waiting for it. "Paula! Am I glad to see you. Tommy's at our place on the beach. You must come to see.him. He's all broken up because you left. He thinks he's having a heart attack." She tried to convince me but I had no desire to see him.

" Please don't tell him you've seen me. I don't want to see him, and I don't care how he feels." I made her promise. "He's been fooling around with other women for a long time. Friends have told me but I didn't care. I suppose I didn't love him enough to. Don't worry about him; he'll be alright."

Albert and I left immediately for San Diego and stayed with the widow of a good friend of his who had worked with him at one of the best hotels in La Jolla. Albert was a first class waiter. He would work six months and take off six months. That's how he happened to be in Las Vegas. Through her, we heard of an opening for a couple to manage a 24 unit apartment building. We interviewed and were hired. The dear old Tyler apartments, built in 1911, with its leaky plumbing and old fashioned Murphy beds was our home for the next four years.

Albert could fix anything it seemed. Electrical, plumbing, painting, and I learned to keep the books and do the renting. Our tenants were young navy wives whose husbands were forever going on maneuvers after maneuvering to impregnate their teen-aged brides. We kept full occupancy by promising to see that the girls got to the hospital when they were in labor and many an hour, in the middle of the night, I sat in the waiting room of Balboa Naval Hospital. Was it real labor or false?

When I finally got in touch with Fred he forgave me for not letting him in on our elopement He was preparing to go to New York to study acting and voice at the Musical Theater Academy. We saw him off on the plane. He saw how happy we were together and told me what .Tommy had said about me the weekend he invited a gang of people to The Last Resort for Thanksgiving dinner. As he stood at the sink washing dishes he was heard to remark, "Damn that Paula! She sure fucked up the holidays!"

37

I felt no sympathy for the man. The days went by, became months, became years. Leaky pipes got mended, rooms were painted and refurnished. New curtains hung at all the windows, and the building was sold to a man who had his own managers and we were out of work. It was challenge, keeping the old place together. We were glad to go. We found a cozy apartment overlooking the bay and Point Loma. Albert went to work at the Del Coronado Hotel and I used our unemployment money to take a course in Hotel and Motel management at a business college.

Looking through the paper one day, I saw an ad for apartment managers in Coronado. I promptly applied and with our training and experience, we got the job. We moved to the Island and found the Riviera Apts a welcome change. Everything worked. Now there would not be the long bus and ferry ride for Albert to get to work and as it was a fairly new place, maintenance would be easy.

It was the sixties, and the Sunset Strip was awash with hippies and LSD. It was a most interesting time. Love-ins and sit-ins. One of my tenants introduced me to a friend of hers, Patricia, whose husband was a Navy flight instructor. She, however, preferred to go to peace marches. She had a couple of sons nearing draft age.

When he was a child living with his uncles, Albert had stuttered, He heard of the experiments being done at McGill University in Canada with LSD and believed it might help him, too. I knew someone who worked for a psychologist in L.A. who was using it in his work. It was not illegal at the time but I hesitated. Meanwhile, I read everything I could find about the drug. I finally gave in and got him some. I couldn't refuse him anything. I even loved to shine his shoes. When he left for work, he looked so fine in his bow tie and cummerbund and boyish smile I hated to let him go.

38

We did a few sessions f Dianetics, using the old techniques to find where it all began. Born out of wedlock, abandoned by mother, fought over by drunken uncles. They called him tongue-tied and when he went to schooI, the school nurse lined up the children to examine their throats. He was so afraid she would see that he was tongued- tied. I took all the material to David Banks, a man I knew who had been a radio announcer, and he made a tape recording for me. It said,

"You are not tongue-tied. You are able to speak in a normal manner", and other affirmations. Albert then re-recorded this material with music by Albenez, a beautiful piece called Iberia which Albert loved.

I decorated the darkened bedroom with vases of flowers and Albert took the the L.S.D. which was a beautiful blue liquid in a small vial and lay down with earphones on.

I had prepared myself to be his guide by reading and listening to tapes we had recorded of professor Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert of Harvard University before they left that institution. Alpert, you may recall, metamorphosed into Baba Ram Das, a sort of guru. Also other recommended books, Book of the Dead, etc.

Albert was very quiet but the angelic expression told me where he was and how he was. I brought him water or juice when he asked. One remark he made I shall never forget. God is a green jelly bead.", this with a big smile.

After the second trip there was a noticeable improvement; he stuttered less and less with each trip. And then one daye he wanted to try Marijuana. He had asked me not to use it and I no hardship to give it up for the seven years we had been together. Then he apologized for asking me not to smoke it.

Through that year he took L.S.D. five or six times, each time with the same tape and the stutter was gone., He often remarked how he enjoyed the freedom of the out-of-body experience; he said coming back was like being in a cage. He claimed that he had seen into the very heart of life, one generation passing the torch to the next. He experienced cosmic conciousness, I believe, and a sequence of the manifestations of life from its beginning.

The following year began to get severe headaches. Nothing seemed to help and his doctor said it was high blood pressure. Much too high.

39

I knew how sensitive he was but hadn't fully realized the strain he'd been under. He could have been deported for a number of things: being in the country illegally, he had never registered, he had run off with a citizen's wife. And during the second world war he had been "high rigger" on ships in Halifax harbor and was deferred for that reason. It was dangerous work not many men could do, but when a ship blew up in the harbor, killing some of his best friends, he felt guilty at having been spared.

He was an illegitimate child: I prefer "Love child", and was abandoned by his mother who didn't want him around when she married and had other children. Albert and his doctor decided to get at the cause of the problem rather than cover it with medications other than restricting salt and prescribing more rest.

We left the Riviera Apts and took a small house near the beach. I went to work at the nearby coffee shop as a waitress and Albert worked at the hotel when he felt well enough and tried to take it easy but the headaches continued. The doctor put him in the hospital in Coronado to wait til there was a bed available at a larger hospital in San Diego.

Visiting hours in the afternoon of his second day there, he was no better. He said," You don"t belong here, You belong out in the sunshinel!" The phone rang at t4 A.lvI. the next morning. It was the doctor calling to tell me he was dead. At 44.

It was impossible! I couldn't believe it! How could he leave me like that? If he and the doctor hadn't been so scientific minded … If only he had taken medications … perhaps the L.S.D. had been the cause. I didn"t know what to do. Well, he was out of the body at last. I hoped it was really what he wanted. I had to arrange a funeral for him. The union he belonged to considered me his wife and were very helpfult The coffin seller got me so distraught I almost screamed, "He's to be cremated! I don"t care if they put him in a shoe box!" But friends arrived &..and it was as it should be, me, unable to keep the tears back and my son there to help me through it.

(next)

One time Albert and I went to see Buckley who was working a coffee house in Laguna Beach. He performed beautifully as always, dressed in his immaculate tuxedo, pith helmet, and white sneakers. Between shows he took us out to see Don Quixote. In the back of his station wagon was a three foot tall metal horse and rider, very lean and determined looking. Perhaps he felt kinship to DonQ. He too was forever tilting at windmills and mostly what he got for his trouble was more trouble. His windmills were real. He was concerned about the greed heads, wanted the world to be a better place and the peopleto be kinder. Protested injustice where ever he found it and got injustice finally in return. Albert and I were at the Tyler Apartments when we got the telegram from Elizabeth telling only that he had died in New York. He was working without a cabaret card because his had been revoked. He was planning a new piece, Don Peyote, but it nevner happened.

Albert 3 -1

Went to Laguna to see Buckley at coffee house. On wagon. News of Las Palmas theater. Fred publicly acknowledged as his son on stage. Benefit performances at prisons. Fred helped Lizabeth's two young kids. Fred shilling and tending bar. Fred to NY, influenced by Lizabeth. Strong resemblance. Fred to L.A. Car work.
Tommy. Apartment manager in Venice. Stabbed. L & I visit in hospital. TB cut out infected part. Lesbian.

Albert 4-1

Albert and the Tyler

Mostly the girls and the babies were home while the men were occupied in the Navy. We were often required to solve their problems. Underwear began disappearing from the clotheslines, panties and bras. Our tenants began to suspect each other. It was a tense situation. There were some men on leave and Albert sat up to watch one night. A few of the girls offered garments and "salted" the clotheslines. It was one of our own sailor boys!They took him to court and the judge recommended rehabilitation for him.

Albert 2 -1

I took all the materialto David, a man who who had been a radio announcer, and he did a tape for me. It said, "You are not tongue-tied; you are able to speak in a normal manner." and other affirmations which applied. Albert and I recorded this material interspersed with music from "Iberia" by Albenez and set it to play continuously.

I decorated the darkened bedroom with vases of flowers. Albert took the LSD which was a beautiful blue liquid in a small vial and lay down with earphones on.

I had prepared myself by reading everything I could find on the subject and listening to tapes we had recorded by Professors Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert of Harvard University, "The Egyptian Book of the Dead" by Evan Wentz, "Tibetan Book of the Dead" and articles in the Oracle, a short lived paper which came out in L.A. advocating an alternative lifestyle.

Albert was very quiet but the blissful expression on his face told me where he was and how he was. I brought him water or fruit or whatever he asked for. One remark he made I never will forget, "God is a green jelly bean."

After the second trip, there was a noticeable improvement in his speaking.

Albert 2-2

for boys who were nearing draft age. Her husband was a Navy flier in Viet Nam but she made it to all the peace marches. It seems they didn't share the same philosophy.

Albert had heard of the experiments which were going on with LSD at McGill University in Canada. He had been a stutterer all his life and believed it might help him. He kept asking me to get some for him. He knew I knew someone who was using it in his work. It was not illegal yet but I kept putting him off. He didn't drink or smoke Marijuana and I tried to dissuade him but I finally gave in. I couldn't refuse him anything. I even loved to shine his shoes. When he left for work, he looked so good in his bow tie and cummerbund, steel gray hair and boyish smile. I hated to see him leave.

We did a few sessions of Dianetics using the old technologies to find out where it all began. He was born out of wedlock and when his mother married he was raised by two uncles who drank and fought constantly. The only person whom he loved and who loved him, it seems, was his grandmother. They called him tongue-tied and when he went to school and the school nurse lined up the children to examine their throats, he was so afraid she would see he was tongue tied.

Albert 2-3
[ handwritten draft identical to previous on this page ]

Albert 1
[ handwritten draft identical to previous on this page ]

I continued working at the Coffee Shop to keep myself together but walking home alone after work the tears would start and I would cry out loud, "Why did you have to leave me? I loved you so much!" Sometimes when I got home the house would be full of the young people who used to visit us at the apartment to hear our tapes and smoke grass and talk about whatever was on their minds. They loved Albert too. They were trying to make it easier for me but I feared they might get us all in trouble playing the music too loud and just all being there together. Coronado was a pretty dull nice, little Navy town

Albert 2

Perhaps that's why liquor consumption there was higher than most places in the country. But I really appreciated them being there and showing how much they cared.
When Albert's friend brought me the contents of his locker from the hotel there was the little shaker of special saltless salt I had fixed for him. It had not been opened.
Nine years of learning what it is to love. Caring deeply for someone who was almost too perfect, and now it was over. But it never really is over, is it? If you have ever loved someone you never stop loving them. And even now I feel the loss.

A friend of mine, Louise, came for a visit and suggested I move to L.A. "It will do you good to get away from here.", she said. I had to agree. Everything reminded me of Albert. After four years the place was full of memories. And life goes on.