Lake Artemus, Summer 1968
8360 Lake Artemus Avenue, San Diego
Where my story got off to a rocky start…
The neighborhood on the one-block Lake Artemus Avenue was full of young families. There were enough kids to get up a good game of Kick-the-Can on summer evenings. The adults would gather at one house or another; the women making potato salad and relish trays and fudgy cupcakes while the men held court over the grill, which had been set up in the driveway, and drank can after can of Lucky Lager.
Eventually, someone’s mom would break up the game by announcing that the burgers and hot dogs were ready, and we’d all come running, filling our paper plates and our bellies. We’d eat as quickly as possible and return to the game, leaving the moms to clean up and the dads to, well, keep drinking.
It was a warm summer evening, and the gathering was at our home. Once the streetlights came on, we all headed to our house to play games in the back bedroom. The adults were in the living room- Herb Alpert on the record player, drinks flowing, voices louder and louder as the evening wore on.
We had a beautiful, mild-tempered, fluffy black English Setter, who this night, was in the backyard. We kids were trying to agree on a game to play when there was unsettling barking outside the bedroom window. Not the type of barking we were used to – when a neighbor’s cat entered the yard, or he was bored and wanted to join the party. No, this bark immediately set our nerves on edge.
My sister leaned over the bed and with trepidation pushed aside the curtain… staring back at her was a strange man. He had been standing at the window and peeping in at all of us.
There was screaming and tears and panic and someone went to get the adults. Four men flew into the yard and chased the prowler up the street, finally tackling him and dragging him back to our house. They put him in the garage and two of the dads stayed with him until the police arrived. I seem to remember them tying him up, but I can’t be certain.
Having captured the creep, my dad retired to the living room for another beer. He was slumped on the couch, hair and clothing disheveled, sweating, and speaking but making little sense. We kids were too afraid to go back to the bedroom, so we waited in the living room with the adults.
The police arrived and my mother led them into the living room. They took one look at my father on the couch and said, “This him? Alright, Pal, come on.” Dad was too drunk to be embarrassed but my mother looked mortified and directed the officers to the garage. I couldn’t have been more than six at the time and yet I still see it so clearly. My father’s curl hanging crazily over his forehead, his gold-colored weekend shirt speckled with baked bean stains and dribbles of beer, as he slumped on the floral sofa behind a coffee table littered with empty beer cans and overflowing ashtrays.
I was so little. But I was old enough to see the shame and resignation in my mother’s eyes.
I’ll never know what the final straw was, but two years later she left him. I felt like life was finally going to be calm and predictable and, dared I hope? Happy.
I should have known better.