As I was watching a man feed a large group of ducks at the park this morning, I thought about our common family outings. I’ve written before about how we enjoyed park outings. There was only one park that had ducks, and I was eager to feed them each time we visited.
That started with food, of course. Anything Dad and I refused in our lunches was fair game. I can just hear my dad voicing his dislike of a new cracker or chip my mom tried to give him: “Those things were tasteless. Just like cardboard.” Into the duck bag they went.
After the ducks were fed, it was time for our own dinner. That usually meant a trip to the nearby IHOP. I think my dad would get a rotisserie chicken entree. We always set in the same booth and the rotisserie was right in my line of vision so I would watch the birds turning over and over. My mom always ordered the Mexican salad served in a giant tostada shell. I remember being fond of the chocolate chip pancakes at one point.
Simple memories, but sometimes those are the best kind to remember.
I’ve written about my dad’s love of libraries before. Usually this would either be a solo outing for my dad, or when I lived at home, we would often make it a father-daughter trip. Rarely did we go as a family. (Mom loves to talk too much to stay quiet for very long. Sorry Mom, but it’s true!)
Anyways, my dad carried on his library tradition after my parents left California and retired in Ruidoso, NM. The librarians knew him by name here too, calling him the formal, “Patrick.” It made him feel special. On one of my rare visits home as an adult (at least until my father became ill), Dad wanted to show off “his” library. So we all piled into whatever boat of a car my dad was driving at the time and ambled our way to the library, which was only a mile or two from their home.
Bear statues can be found all over Ruidoso, an homage to Smokey the Bear. There’s a large bear statue outside of the Ruidoso library, and my mom wanted us to pose around it, while we snagged a bystander to snap a photo for us. The photo sums up our family pretty well: corny, quirky but quite harmless.
I’m not sure if dad’s vivid nightmares began before or after the haunted hotel experience. Growing up, I remember both my mom and I being frightened by the screams and moans my dad would make when he was suffering from a particularly bad nightmare. I’m sure it was not fun for my mom to be awakened by my dad’s thrashing and yelling. She said sometimes it would take her quite awhile to wake him. He then would bolt upright in bed, wide-eyed and with sweat lining his brow. “Oh, that was a bad one,” was a typical response.
When he could remember the dreams the next morning over breakfast, they usually consisted of the “bad man chasing me” variety of nightmares. Dad was usually a pretty calm, quiet kind of guy, so when he exhibited the kind of fear he did when he was having a nightmare, we knew he wasn’t being dramatic. The bad dreams didn’t happen that often, maybe a handful or so a year, but I can definitely recall waking my dad up from a bad nightmare on more than one occasion in my childhood. It was a bit of a role reversal in the family unit, as usually it’s the parent that has to soothe the child and convince them there’s not a monster under the bed.
It does make me wonder if Dad continued to have nightmares as his dementia progressed. If so, was he able to comprehend that it was just a dream and not reality?
UPDATE Feb. 2021: The documentary, “Crime Scene: The Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel,” premieres on Netflix on Feb. 10. I was interviewed for the project. Check out the trailer below.
Previously, I wrote about finding my dad’s naturalization record on Ancestry.com. I also found the original certificate after sorting through my father’s belongings. Out of curiosity, I Googled the address listed as my dad’s residential address on the form. Results for the Cecil Hotel in downtown Los Angeles popped up. As I delved deeper, I discovered what a bizarre history this place has, and it also made me remember dad’s haunted hotel story.
In more modern times, the Cecil became home to serial killers, such as the “Night Stalker” Richard Ramirez and Jack Unterweger. Now the hotel is trying to reinvent itself by promoting its central location and affordable rates. You really should check out the reviews and photos online. Talk about bait-and-switch. The lobby is absolutely grand, pristine with gorgeous architectural details. But once you leave the lobby, things get grim (and grimy) in a hurry.
If you enjoy reading hotel horror stories, just Google it. Some politely refer to it as a “transient hotel” and others call it an outright dump. This gentleman has an excellent description of his stay there, entitled “A Dump with a Future.”
The Cecil Hotel also served as inspiration for the “Hotel” installment of American Horror Story.
In a nutshell, the Cecil Hotel has never had a sterling reputation, even when it was known as the Hotel Cecil during my dad’s tenure there in the mid-1960’s. In 1962, a woman committed suicide by jumping from a room at the Cecil, also killing a pedestrian that she landed on below. Goldie Osgood, known as the “pigeon lady of Pershing Square” was choked to death in a room there in 1964. The case was never solved.
Which leads right into my dad’s haunted hotel experience. Every time he told the story, I could feel the fear come off of him in waves, even after so much time had passed. He claims he went to sleep that night in his room at the Cecil, only to awaken to the feeling that he was being smothered and choked. He was bathed in a cold sweat and couldn’t move or call for help. He felt a heavy presence weighing down on his chest, and what felt like hands around his throat, but he could not see anyone. He literally thought he was going to die in that room. Finally, he was able to move. He bolted out of the room and ran downstairs to the front desk. After he gasped for breath, he told the hotel clerk what had happened. The clerk said nonchalantly that someone had been murdered in that room. Dad was able to get his room changed, as he made it clear he would never sleep another moment in that room.
Did Dad have a supernatural experience in that room? Was it the room the pigeon lady was murdered in just the year before? I’ll never know, but it does make for one hell of a story.
If you have your own experience at the Cecil Hotel, I’d love to hear about it. Many have reached out and shared their accounts. Feel free to share your story in the comments section.
As part of my research for this blog, I’ve been spending some time on Ancestry.com, building out the family tree and looking for any documents I can find relating to my family. I did stumble upon my dad’s naturalization record. It doesn’t reveal much, though it does finally solve a family mystery of sorts.
Dad’s birth year was 1932. That’s what it said on his driver’s license and other official documents. But Dad would insist he was born in 1933. My mom and I never understood this little white lie. If you are going to fib about your age, wouldn’t you go ahead and shave at least 5 years off? What difference does a year make in the scheme of things?
The naturalization record says April 10, 1932 so case closed. Sorry, Dad.
I was curious about the address listed as my dad’s residence on the document. It turns out to be a very interesting place. More about that tomorrow.
For most of his career, my dad worked a swing shift, so he would eat dinner late at night and have “breakfast” later in the morning when he woke up. I say “breakfast” because what my mom would serve him after waking wasn’t your typical breakfast food by a long shot. Clam chowder was a favorite, as was baked halibut. I clearly remember the disconcerting aroma of fish wafting through the house at ten in the morning.
And being from that generation that consumed coffee like water, he always had a cup of coffee with every meal. He also enjoyed V-8, and I can still remember how the viscous beverage left a film around the glass that always disgusted me.
Clam chowder for breakfast? Photo via microwaverecipescookbook.com
Dad also had a sweet tooth, so that meant a lot of jelly or honey with his toast. He would usually watch the news while he was eating or maybe just sit and “listen” to mom chatter as she did her daily chores. Then it would be time for him to get ready for work and do it all over again.
At the end of his life, I remember the palliative doctor asking us what dad’s favorite foods were, as they were going to remove the feeding tube and start hand feeding. “He loved fish,” I said without hesitation. They proceeded with the hand feeding over the last month of his life, but I’m not sure if he ever had the chance to taste fish again in this world. That’s when you know it’s time to let someone go, when they can no longer take pleasure in the simple things that nourish our body and soul.
It seems so much has happened in the two months since my father passed away. Grief still saturates my atmosphere and I think of my father several times a day. Most of the time, I still picture him at the end of his life, which is painful. However, it is a relief to not be waiting for “that call” anymore. I realize that for almost the entire year of 2011 I lived in a state of anxiety, fearing my father’s death long before it actually happened.
In the past two months, good things have started to happen. I started this blog project, which is being well-received by the community and has been great therapy for me. I also am now a storyteller on Cowbird, where I will be writing visual-focused stories about my dad and other areas of my life. I know Dad would be proud, as he always encouraged my interest in writing. I think in a different life Dad would have been a writer as well, penning books about down-on-their-luck boxers with Irish names, and maybe a novel or two about the IRA, which he claimed to be a member of at one time.
My mom is still struggling to find her way alone in this world. She still talks to my dad every day, telling him that she misses him and loves him.
There are still regrets about the last few years that I am working my way through, but I know I cannot change the past, I can only take what I’ve learned and apply it to the present and future. A loss of a loved one changes you forever, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing.
When I was a small child, I was fascinated by my dad’s surgical scar and the story behind it. I’m sure that I did not understand all of the details at the time, or even understand the concept of death and how close my dad came to losing his life after complications from abdominal surgery.
What I do remember is the scar on my dad’s stomach, which was a rigid, pale rope of hardened tissue that ran in a vertical direction. I always asked permission before touching it, though it caused him no pain, just a reminder of a frightening moment in his younger days.
At the time, I had a kid’s doctor kit. It came with a plastic stethoscope and reflex hammer and some other vaguely medical-looking doo-dads and a box of “pills” which consisted of candy. My dad would humor me while he was lying in bed reading by allowing me to “examine” him. He would always dutifully accept the prescription of “pills” that I offered him each time.
Sadly, at the end of his life, I could not prescribe him any cure for his condition, nor could the best specialists in Albuquerque. But I still have sweet memories of this daughter-dad bonding moment from my childhood.
As a kid, I was always amazed at my dad’s feet, of all things. They were flat as a board, without a hint of an arch. I used to call them sleds. I think my dad preferred the more poetic term, “fallen arches” but that always made me think of a building falling apart.
Anyways, as far as I know, Dad always had flat feet. He had to wear special inserts in his shoes. Unfortunately, he always had jobs where he stood on his feet a lot, which can lead to more discomfort than normal in people with flat feet. Still, he loved to walk, and walk fast, so his impediment didn’t seem to bother him much.
I inherited my dad’s long feet, but not his fallen arches. As a small child, I loved having my feet massaged. My mom would rub baby oil on my feet while she massaged my toes and I would squeal with delight. It’s one of those places in childhood you wouldn’t mind returning to on a stressful day.
When I was a small girl, some company set up a petting zoo in the parking lot of our town’s shopping mall. The idea of farm animals in the midst of suburban wasteland seems odd now, but as I child, all I saw were cute, cuddly animals. I begged my parents to pay the nominal admission fee.
My mom was more than willing to go, as she had been raised on a farm and had milked cows every morning before going to school. It was my chance to get a taste of farm life.
Dad was a little less eager. He liked animals well enough … from a distance. He was a bit skittish around their unpredictable behavior. So it’s fitting as to what came next.
My eyes were wide like saucers as I gingerly petted a sheep or a pig and maybe a donkey or pony. My mom right behind me with sanitary wipes (she was way ahead of the trend on this, as I’ve read of outbreaks of disease at petting zoos in the last few years.) In the meantime, Dad had found himself a new friend.
It was a goat, and it had really taken a shine to my dad … or at least his sweater. The goat kept trying to to take a bite or two out of the sleeve of his sweater and my dad kept trying to move away from it. But dad was the goat’s new obsession and would not leave him alone. Finally, my mom noticed my dad’s distress and one of the handlers rounded up the lovestruck goat and commented on how goat are curious creatures that will chew on just about anything to see if it’s worth eating. Ummm, so maybe not the best animal to have at the petting zoo?
Anyways, Dad hightailed it out of there before any other farm animals tried to turn his sweater into Swiss cheese. I think it was my one and only trip to a petting zoo, but we had a good laugh about it over the years as a family.
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The Memories Project 