Oy, it’s been a while since my last post. First, some old business. In my last post, I asked if anyone could recognize the two fellas in their short johns standing by RFK. No one got the correct answer (because no one tried to answer it), but in case you’re interested they are two running backs for the New York Giants, Ernie Koy and Tucker Fredrickson. The photo is part of a large collection I have— and will post over time — of pictures taken for Eliot Asinof’s wonderful book about pro football “Seven Days to Sunday,” in which he spent time as a fly on the wall at the Giants camp in 1966. Great book, terrible team. Oh well.
Now on to new business. In the mid-1980s, I made my first trip to California to research a book that eventually went into the trash. Still, it was a great trip. To amuse myself, I bought this guidebook to dozens of gruesome historical sites around the city and decided it would be fun to make a photo album of me standing like a tourist in front of some of these places, generally oblivious to the horribleness that went on inside. Afterall, I was playing the archetypal American tourist (“Yes, Martha, take a picture of me on the grassy knoll” without a sense of irony) This really became the inspiration for my “Eve’s Apple” book, which also went nowhere. Still, I thought I’d post some of the pictures of me in my brown-haired days as the Gruesome Tourist.
The first shows me in front of the house where Alfalfa (aka Carl Switzer) from the Li’l Rascals was shot and killed over a gambling debt. I actually knocked on the door and the lady who owned the place let me in and showed me the room where he was killed. She took me to her son’s bedroom and showed me the bullet holes, which were still in the wall. Apparently, the kid made a little living charging people to come and stick their fingers in the holes. I explained to her that I didn’t practice checkbook journalism, so she let me off the hook.
Here’s the shot:
