Some succulent memories
2008; Volume: 80; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
10.2985/0007-9367(2008)80[12
ISSN1938-288X
Autores Tópico(s)Archaeology and Natural History
ResumoI seem to have been first aware of plants when I was around eight, while in the Opportunity Room at the Gardner Street School just off Sunset Boulevard in what was then unincorporated county territory but which is now part of West Hollywood, California. The class, a product of the progressive education movement, was for non-average students, both low and high achievers. They never told me to which category I belonged, but as I was having difficulty relating to mathematics, I assume it was the former. There were some potted plants on the windowsill, plus an aquarium with a turtle, and the teacher, noticing my interest in them, placed them in my care. Thus I became curator of both a botanic garden and a zoo at an unusually early age. My father had a dog and cat hospital at Santa Monica Boulevard and Detroit Street, opposite the United Artists studio (later Samuel Goldwyn Studio and, later still, one of the Warner Brothers studios) and the still-famous Formosa Inn where studio personnel repaired for Chinese food and, more importantly, drinks. Among my father’s clients were a number of Hollywood stars (among them Bela Lugosi, who had just appeared in Dracula, and Wallace Berry, who was always late in paying his veterinary bills). My mother later told me that when I was six or so I had played with Mickey Rooney in the next block, on Formosa Street—he was two years older than me and was already in films under the name of Mickey McGuire. One day I accompanied my father to a beach town to visit an ailing dog (yes, vets often made house calls then, though it was in the middle of the Great Depression). The lady had some beautiful plants in her garden, but one of them utterly transfixed me, though not because of its beauty, which it lacked conspicuously. In a too-small pot, its swollen, streaked stems jutted out at awkward angles, and it lacked both leaves and flowers. Just why such a plant (which I later found out was the candle plant, Kleinia—or Senecio—articulata) should appeal to me has remained a mystery v
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