Mr. Toy's Mental Notes

The Monterey Peninsula lost three of our resident celebrities in the past month, Michael Nesmith, John Madden, and Betty White. I have no stories to tell about the first two, but I do have a very brief one involving Betty White. A few decades ago my mother and sister Liz were visiting from Oregon. We were having lunch at The Thunderbird, a bookstore/restaurant just outside Carmel. Quite suddenly Betty White came around the corner and started browsing the bookshelves next to our table. Liz's jaw dropped. My mother had a puzzled look on her face. Once Betty White had moved out of earshot I asked my mom if she knew who that was. She said "No." When I told her it was Betty White she said "Oh, I thought she looked familiar. But I thought she was someone I knew when we lived here and I wondered if I should say something to her." That wasn't too far fetched because she would occasionally run into old friends on her frequent visits. Even though Betty White was a ...

Trump tweets dumb tweets from the Oval, Trumty Dumpty's tweets are spiteful, All of his lawyers and all of his kin, Couldn't make Trump's tweets coherent again.  

Back in the early 1960s, when I was but a wee tyke, my mommy signed me up for a pre-school program at Bay School, the “Little Red Schoolhouse” tucked into the eucalyptus grove along Highway 1 just south of Carmel. This 19th Century one-room schoolhouse had been revitalized several years earlier by a colorful woman named Rosa Doner, who had a way of bringing joy, adventure, and just the right amount of discipline to what is now called early childhood education. Back then we called it nursery school. Parents were part of the program, and Rosa required every mother to participate in the operation one day a week. It was here I learned how to paint with brushes and fingers. I learned to play the triangle and tambourine. I observed that raccoons had human-like hands. I learned to chew the sour grass that grew alongside the playground. I saw first-hand where wool came from and that the school's sheep looked funny naked. And I found out that popcorn made me throw up and I refused to t...

One of the biggest news stories last week was the tragic suicide of comedian Robin Williams. There is no question that the world lost a great comic genius . His improvisational skills were unparalleled, and he made a lot of people laugh, including me. Many of his fans, along with other Hollywood stars he preformed with, have talked about his warmth, passion, and humor, and they were uniformly stunned that a man who was so delightful and had everything one could want, would just kill himself like that . But when I read the news, I wasn't the least bit surprised. Sad, definitely, but not surprised. Although Robin Williams could make me laugh, he also creeped me out a little bit. Not intentionally, of course, but whenever I watched him I always felt a little uneasy. I sensed he had a dark side. It was nothing I could put my finger on or in any way define. Just a vague sense that deep inside of him something was terribly amiss. So while I found him to be entertaining, I never...

One of our local celebrities, Joan Fontaine, passed away over the weekend. The famous Hollywood actress spent her retirement years living in the Carmel Highlands. Coincidentally, the two Alfred Hitchcock films Rebecca and Suspicion , which made her a big-name star, both contained brief scenes filmed right here on the Monterey Peninsula. The first film in 1940 got her an Academy Award nomination, while her second performance the following year earned the Oscar itself. I had the opportunity to meet Ms. Fontaine a few times in the 1980s when I worked at Brinton's in Carmel. She was a regular customer there. Among the store's staff she had a reputation as being kinda fussy, but in my dealings with her I always found her to be very pleasant, easygoing, and friendly. I remember one occasion when she was seeking advice on the best way to remove mildew from a patio umbrella. It was a rather mundane conversation, but an enjoyable memory nevertheless. One of the last times I saw h...