Baseball and Cricket - the difference; or Memorial Day in the Valley.

Memorial Day in America is a national holiday; what you would call in Britain a bank holiday, and when I first moved there I would go to a big house in the San Fernando Valley (The Valley) to celebrate with a friend of a friend.

The friend was a guy called Hank; everybody called him Hank but his real name was Chaim – pronounced Hime, with that guttural sound on the aitch – but people called him Hank. It wasn't that he wasn't proud to be Jewish but Hank was easier for goys to remember and pronounce. 

 

Now 'goy' is a Yiddish word and if there was one thing I liked about Hank it was his use of Yiddish; I learned what a schnorrer was, a schlemiel, a schlepper and all the other uses of words not so complimentary but colourful and interesting. 

 

I also got used to hearing those words from his other friends and when I went to the world première of the movie Showgirls (don't ask) with him I met all the guys in the producer's office and learned their humour too.

When they heard my accent they'd say 'Where you fram – Joysey??'

In fact if there's one thing I miss about LA it's the Jewish humour – not Jewish jokes but Jewish humour – you know: Woody Allen, Seinfeld etc. 

 

The Jews here in Britain, seem to play gentiles ever since David Kossoff died. The closest thing Britain ever got to a Jewish series, since Never Mind the Quality, Feel the Width was a series made by Indians called Goodness Gracious Me which had that fish out of water, matriarchal, Italian/Jewish/Irish feel to it, even though it was from a country so far away.

Back to memorial day and my pal Hank.

I went to the house twice in the valley and it was the same story each time; when we arrived we met Hank's pal and he would be sitting in the big house by himself. He would take us in to the rear of the house where there would be loads of food and drinks all set out on a garden table next to the pool.

'The others will be here soon' he would say 'Hey Chris – when we have time maybe you can explain to me the rules of cricket.'

And I would say 'They're quite simple it's . . . '

'When we got time' he'd say; then we would sit around and take a drink.

A little while later his daughter would arrive, by herself, and sit at the table. She had the same conversation each time and that was to do with the 'valley' seceding from Los Angeles.

That's all she was interested in and, in fact, one of the years they had an election and the people of the valley decided to stay in Los Angeles.

After that the fella's ex-wife would show up. She would sit with the daughter and the fella would say 'how about some food' and as we were helping ourselves the son would arrive. 

 

He wouldn't say hello to anybody but would get in to some argument with dad and the arguments would usually spring from the fact that mom and dad were no longer a couple, mom no longer lived in the big house and neither did the kids.

So each Memorial Day this fella would get ready for a big garden party that no one went to; the son was embarrassing, the daughter was a typical 'valley girl' and the poor mother would try and hold on to the remnants that once were her family.

Each time we went there we ended up playing darts and leaving most of the food.

One year, Hank brought along his wife – that was a new one on me and I think he married her so she could get a green card.

She was a make up assistant in the film industry and Hank and his pal were assistant film directors; they were always setting up one big film after another none of which ever happened and if there's one thing to know about the Los Angeles film industry it's that most people have a script in their pocket, a project they are working on and, as an actor, I have been offered stardom more times than I can remember.

It was usually 'I want your voice in my movie' – my voice? Maybe I can get in to it too aye?

Hank asked me to join him when Memorial Weekend came about again – some time in May, as a rule, before the weather got really hot and the sun reflecting on the pool would blind you with its glare and when I would go indoors to get away from it the image of the last thing I was looking at would stay with me – but I passed as it was just too embarrassing.

I never completely lost contact with Hank; he would call me every Saint Patrick's Day and offer his services as a nominated driver. He drove a 1963 Chevy Nova convertible with red seats and white body work and in the winter, even though it was LA, it was cold, as he couldn't get the hood to work – or the top or whatever it's called - so we were forever in the open.

When I started to do my one man Irish Show on St Patrick's Day in the year 2000 he came to see it and one year he brought along the guy from the valley.

'Nice show, Chris; listen when we get time maybe you can tell me the rules of cricket.'

'Yeh – when we get time' I'd say.

I did the show each year up to about 2010 and each year I'd send Hank a flyer and he would call to say he was available as a nominated driver.

As well as the Yiddish, Hank had a very rough voice with a thick Brooklyn accent; he would talk about his 'dawdter' and his 'mudder an' farder' and one day when his daughter showed up she turned out to be quite a beauty. It was strange to see something so beautiful with such a rough looking man – let's face it he looked like a gangster.

One year one of the flyers came back – not at this address, so I feared the worst.

Hank had called me one day, when I got back from New York; I saw his name on my 'caller I.D.' thing on the phone and meant to call him back but I was rushing out so I didn't. He probably wanted to know how his home town was.

I felt guilty not calling him that day as I knew what the returned envelope meant, which I kept in the car; one day when I was travelling through Culver City, I called at his address and what I had suspected was true.

The manager of the building told me he had died; he had a heart attack one day and that was all he knew.

All the stuff I knew died with him: his daughter, his mother in New York, his money worries, the very cheap places to eat he had found all over Los Angeles and his Chevy Nova convertible, which he called Betsy – all gone.

Took me a long time to get over the guilt of not calling him that day – but I did think of him just as I think of all my friends, like you, that I will call one day.

Just as one day I'll tell you the difference between baseball and cricket.