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AuthorHouse - Carol Flemming

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186 pages

English

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From meeting some of the greatest rock and jazz musicians of the 20th century and designing hats that circled the globe worn by notables such as Elton John, Ben Vereen, and Michael Jackson, this book is a colorful romp through an unforgettable era in Northern California.
Packed with stories about hippies, rock ‘n roll, and fast cars, What Was I Thinking? Is my unabashed retelling of stories from my life during the 1940s to 1980s that led me to become a booking agent of big-name bands, to running a gallery, a teen center, and a Mexican culture center, to owning two restaurants, traveling worldwide, raising six children, marrying eight husbands, writing a cookbook, and working as a celebrated costume/mascot designer.
Carol Flemming attended UCSC and has been a costume designer for fifty years, www.carolflemming.com, and owned three restaurants, has six grown children. Loves to Travel, Garden, Dance and does yoga. She lives in Valley Springs, cA with her Partner Phil and two dogs.
As the wise Meher Baba once said, “In order to appreciate truth, approach it through itself, without any game of hide and seek.” Hiding nothing, this book holds my truth. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed living it.
Please visit Carol’s website: www.whatwasithinking.me

Sujets

Biography

Autobiography

Life

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Publié par	AuthorHouse
Date de parution	24 juillet 2022
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781665564960
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0200€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

What Was I thinking?
A MEMOIR
CAROL FLEMMING

AuthorHouse™
1663 Liberty Drive
Bloomington, IN 47403
www.authorhouse.com
Phone: 833-262-8899

© 2022 Carol Flemming. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 07/22/2022

ISBN: 978-1-6655-6495-3 (sc)
ISBN: 978-1-6655-6494-6 (hc)
ISBN: 978-1-6655-6496-0 (e)

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.
Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.
Contents
Dedication
That Woman Is A Success . . .
Foreword
Section 1: IN THE BEGINNING
Chapter 1 Growing up
Chapter 2 Married at fifteen
Chapter 3 Graystone manor and finding religion
Chapter 4 Motherhood and monkeys
Chapter 5 Disillusionment
Chapter 6 John, finding love
Section 2: SAN FRANCISCO
Chapter 7 Turning twenty-one
Chapter 8 San Francisco and the music
Chapter 9 Life in the Fast Lane
Chapter 10 Crash and burn
Chapter 11 Tamar and astrology
Chapter 12 Dale Patrick Gleason (aka psychopath)
Section 3: FRESNO
Chapter 13 The weight of change
Chapter 14 Bass Lake and LSD
Chapter 15 Judge and the renaissance fair
Chapter 16 Damhara
Section 4: THE HIPPIE YEARS
Chapter 17 Pete
Chapter 18 Damhara and the youth center
Chapter 19 Two ciggys
Chapter 20 Summer of love
Chapter 21 Fun with Pete and Carol
Chapter 22 Arresting development
Chapter 23 There goes the neighborhood
Chapter 24 Horror in wing-tip shoes
Chapter 25 End of era
Section 5: SANTA CRUZ
Chapter 26 The house on Bixby street
Chapter 27 George “Scooter” Kinnear
Chapter 28 Manny Santana and the Mexican heritage center
Chapter 29 The Pebble: my first restaurant
Chapter 30 Bill, a love story
Chapter 31 Bill (continued)
Chapter 32 The Grand Canyon
Chapter 33 The nickel game
Chapter 34 The Porsche
Chapter 35 Virginia City and snow fun
Chapter 36 Streaking with rambling Jack Elliot
Chapter 37 Fishing with Russ
Chapter 38 Dinner with Brucie
Chapter 39 A trip across the pond: travels with Shan Fred
Chapter 40 What Italians call a big-a mist
Chapter 41 The Santa Cruz Costume Bank 1972
Chapter 42 Patt
Chapter 43 Halloween: We all dress up
Chapter 44 Tommy
Chapter 45 Cheech and Chong
Chapter 46 Sweet Brucie and friends and how Brucie became Kelly Houston
Chapter 47 Greg and Ohio
Chapter 48 Mr. Wonderful
Dedication
This book is dedicated to my inspiration my bestest friend who has never said an unkind word about anyone. My partner in crime Marti Ochs.
Thank you to the many women who have encouraged and helped me along the way, including Ruby, Marjorie, Lynne, and Julie. A special thanks to Catherine Lenox for her patience while editing my first draft. And a very special thanks to my granddaughter Aimee who told me not to edit out the parts that would embarrass Lisa.
That Woman Is A Success . . .
Who loves life
And lives it to the fullest,
Who has discovered and shared
The strengths and talents
That are uniquely her own;
Who puts her best into each task
And leaves each situation
Better than she found it;
Who seeks and finds
That which is beautiful
In all people ... and all thing.
Whose heart if full of love
And warm with compassion;
Who has found joy in living
And peace within herself.
Poem by Barbara J Burrow
Foreword
It is an honor to be chosen to write this foreword. After reading this book at least a dozen times, I feel like I know Carol like the back of my hand. I am the granddaughter of Carol, as well as one of the editors of this book. It was about eight years ago that she gave me a chapter called “Cop Karma,” and two things occurred to me: Great Carol has a zest for life, and I had a craving to know more about it. What experiences did she have that brought her to be so unapologetically herself? That’s when our relationship truly began.
After pulling many weeds together and washing dishes from several of her wonderfully cooked meals, I realized that who I was standing next to can not only be an inspiration to me, but to everyone. From being the first woman to become a booking agent in San Francisco, to obliviously becoming one of the leaders of the hippy movement during the late ’60s, to owning a costume business for fifty years and counting, it was never a question in my mind that Carol is a legend of her time. Born in the early ’40s, this resilient woman openly shares of moments that are so embarrassing it will make you turn pink, traumas that will tug at your heart strings, and blessings that make you wonder if you ate enough dirt as a child. A cat of nine lives, Carol will humor you with stories of her first six husbands and the lifestyle that followed with each—one of which is a love story we all dream of having. In the midst of the organized chaos, she also unexpectedly had five children along the way.
As you read her book, you will quickly realize that she repeatedly asks herself the question: what was I thinking? I think it’s safe to say we all have those glorious memories that cause us to shudder at the very thought, but she reminds us that no matter what life throws our way, it is all part of the adventure, and everything happens for a reason. Her eccentric way of being is within all of us, however, only some are brave enough to expose it to the world.

Proofreader
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June 6, 2022
SECTION 1

In the Beginning
CHAPTER 1
Growing up
(if my childhood memories bore, you start at Chapter 2)
It was 1941. My first memory is being rocked in my mother’s arms in the farm’s kitchen during a blackout. We were at war with the Japanese. Fade to black.
Second memory: Riding in the back of a 1936 Ford with my brother and a Shetland pony to visit my grandmother in Oakland. Yes, a pony in a car. My dad made extra money by taking kids’ photos on her.
My father came through the Great Depression. He left school and sold vegetables, which my grandmother sold from a truck. I have a black and white photo of my dad standing in front of the truck loaded with vegetables. My grandparents’ home was a wonderful place that we would visit on weekends, and I spent my summers there. My grandfather was a carpenter and built their house, and my grandmother helped design it. I saw an early picture of it when there were rolling hills and fields of waving grass all around. The house was set in what became the middle of the block many years later.
By the time I arrived, they had neighbors, but the house was so beautifully located between tall cedar trees, hedges of roses, and bushes that bore berries that made the birds drunk. I loved the two giant crab apple trees on either side of the front porch. The house was a brown shingle with windows that opened into the garden. My grandmother used to pick apples upstairs out the window, and she’d pickle the crab apples with cinnamon sticks and cloves. They were beautiful in their glass mason jars.
On the side of the house was a lathe house where my grandmother prepared her seedlings for the garden. It smelled of earth, and I loved it. Her garden was full of fragrance. The best was a leggy lemon verbena that grew in the partial shade next to the fireplace. That smell still reminds me of my grandmother, and when I was young. I would crush the leaves in water and make a perfume-water. There was a stone patio with green mossy stuff that grew between the stones and many flowering shade plants in the back. Past the patio was the main garden where the vegetables were grown: potatoes, chard, lettuce, tomatoes, pole beans, eggplant, broccoli, beets, and carrots. Off to the side was the garage/workshop—my grandfather’s hideaway. It smelled of wood shavings, tobacco, and him. As kids, we snuck in there once in a while and found his stash of alcohol and told my grandmother, who immediately marched out there and took it away.
On the side of the garage, in full sun, was the place my grandfather grew his sweet peas. They grew eight feet tall, climbing on the twine he’d strung—a profusion of color and the sweetest fragrance. We would gather bunches of them and put them in fruit jars, which filled the house with their sweet smell. Across from the sweet peas were the raspberries. I would spend time standing in the patch of sweet berries daydreaming in the sun, eating berries until my heart’s content. Mom, who we called our paternal grandmother, made fabulous jam with those berries.
This is where I developed my green thumb and found that what my grandmother used to say was true for me: “You are never closer to God than when you are in the garden.” Later, when my parents split up, I returned to live with my grandmother. I felt like I was the lucky one. Back to the house tour from the tile covered porch.
The key was hung under the thermometer on the wall to the left, through a glass door. I have since come to love glass. I don’t understand people who live in dark spaces like caves with the drapes drawn. Let the light in! The